Fork and Gobble It: Tuscan Adventures, Part 1

We are on a plane bound for Rome and then Florence. From Florence, we travel by car to a small village in central Tuscany called Colle di Val d'Elsa. It is the first day of a deferred honeymoon that will have us in a villa central to everywhere, but in the middle of nowhere. Sienna, Florence, San Gimignano, Montalcino, are all no more than an hour away by car, but here we are tucked away up on a hillside isolated from everything but ourselves and beautiful landscape as far as the eye can see. The winding gravel driveway up to the villa is over 2 kilometers long and wide enough for only one car. We unpack as we sip champagne from Egly-Ouriet and feel a great sense of pleasure knowing we have no plans until Monday, two days from now. This is Villa Montecastelli, formerly a fortress constructed in the 12 century, now restored by Jens Schmidt into a working farm, olive oil estate, and luxury residence that we will call home for the next 7 days. We finished settling in and I take my wife Stacey for a tour of the grounds.

It is now well into the afternoon and we decide to go into town to get supplies. I will cook dinner tonight and I have no expectations until I get to the supermarket. SMA is a supermarket chain throughout the area and there is one right in Colle di Val d'Elsa. We are blown away by the selection and freshness of the produce, meat, seafood, and cheese. After making a quick survey of what is available, I decide pick up a couple of steaks, asparagus, and fixings for a green salad. We also buy olives, assorted cheeses, and marinated white anchovies for our antipasti.

I guess I should clarify. Antipasti is any assortment of small dishes one consumes as appetizers. Traditionally the next course would be a pasta course, so the food you have before that is your antipasti.

We had assorted olives marinated in citrus zest and chili pepper, reggiano parmigiana cheese, a pecorino Toscana studded with black truffles, and Taleggio, a triple cream cheese with a pungent aroma but a heavenly flavor. The white anchovies were marinated in olive oil, chili pepper and herbs. Their flavor is very mild and a little briny. With this we drank a local white wine from the village of Pitigliano in the coastal Maremma region. Bianco di Pitigliano is a delicious wine made primarily from Trebbiano. Unfortunately, very little if any is exported to the U.S..

While we talked and ate, I lit a fire in the wood burning grill in our kitchen. The gorgeous steaks we had were from grass fed cattle. They were much redder and leaner than the beef you see here, but not coming from feed lot cattle, they were definitely healthier as well. I grilled the asparagus, prepared a green salad dressed with the olive oil from the villa, Primo Olio, and grilled the steaks.

With the steaks I popped open a Rosso di Montepulciano, the baby brother to Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. A simple dinner of delicious ingredients, prepared simply. We finished eating and took our glasses outside to toast the sunset that evening. It was a fine start to what would be a great week.