Tuscany’s Traditional Dishes Are VEGAN?! Unseen Food of Italy + Animal-Free Farming!

Did you know that a lot of Italian food just happens to be vegan?

TUSCANY, ITALY – This episode is taking me to Tuscany to learn how Cucina Povera, the cooking of the poor, has long led to incredible dishes that are naturally plant-based. Plus, I finally get to see a farming system that works entirely without animals. Thanks for supporting this show @SlowFoodInt & Meatless Monday.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:44 Giulia Scarpaleggia
01:13 Orzo
02:03 Cucina Povera
02:42 Torta di Ceci
04:05 Panzanella
05:10 Pappa al Pomodoro
07:36 Castagnaccio
09:45 Veganic Farming
15:17 Pici all’Aglione
20:03 Tuscan Bread
26:37 End

🍝 My favourite food spots (mobile only): https://link.stepyourworld.com/hermann

Tuscany Food Tour:

First, I’m in Volterra to meet up with Giulia Scarpaleggia (https://www.instagram.com/julskitchen). We’re tasting Orzo, a barley-based coffee, at L’ Incontro (https://maps.app.goo.gl/aAE9yH69WEG3f91EA), before heading to Pizzeria del Corso (https://maps.app.goo.gl/Shn4PVP4jGPMCgFh6) for a Torta di Ceci. After that, she brings us to Ristorante Da Beppino (https://maps.app.goo.gl/p8f7QZ6B5KoQ7FWV8) for Panzanella and Pappa al Pomodoro.

We also visited Giulia’s studio and cooked two traditional Tuscan dishes. Her favourite Pappa al Pomodoro as well as Castagnaccio, a Tuscan cake made out of chestnut flour.

I always wanted to learn what a farming system without animals would look like. That’s why I visited Agrivilla I Pini (https://maps.app.goo.gl/drfBTctMJ6mhWZ4g9) and met up with the head chef Lahiri. He took me on a tour through the garden, showed me how they make a manure from wild plants and also taught me how to cook Pici all’Aglione to which he added some nettle powder, which surprisingly has 40% protein!

Finally, I visited I Seminanti (https://maps.app.goo.gl/G7gKGqyUBdcwzAoC9), a seed to bread bakery that bakes traditional Tuscan bread. Tuscan bread is notorious for lacking salt and I learned what that’s all about. We finished the day with a traditional Panzanella in the garden.

The Mission:
Most cultures have traditional vegan dishes in their culinary repertoire, be it because of religion or poverty. These dishes are oftentimes in a healthy relationship with their immediate surroundings. My goal is to find and share these foods so that we can embrace the local culture even if on a plant-based diet.

Let me know in the comments which country I should visit next and what kind of dishes I might find!

Want to support my work? You can buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/bakinghermann

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Thanks for watching!

Get ready for Italian street food made out of chickpeas, Come on! bread baked in a woodfired oven. Wonderful. And a farming system that works entirely without animal manure. – Happy? – Very good! Exactly! Buono! In this episode, I’m exploring what Tuscany has to offer, all with one mission.

It’s got to be traditionally plant-based. Mangiamo! From salads that revive stale bread into an explosion of summer flavors to pasta that is traditionally made without egg. Tuscany has a rich tradition of food without any animal products, and I’m about to see what that’s all about.

First up, I’m in Volterra to meet with Giulia Scarpaleggia, a local cook, food writer and expert in Italy’s Kitchen of the Poor, La Cucina Povera. Giulia is taking me around some of our favorite spots to show me a popular coffee that is not made from coffee

Beans as well as a local street food spot that dishes out a thin, crispy pancake made almost entirely from chickpeas. Ciao Giulia, finally. – So nice to finally meet you. – Yeah. – Welcome to Volterra. – Grazie mille. We are meeting up in a historic cafe here in Volterra to start the day

The proper way with Italian coffee. But the coffee Giulia ordered for me is not quite what you’d expect. Okay, so the coffee arrived. So we’ve got a normal caffè Espresso, ya. and orzo. Orzo! Tell me again, What is orzo. Orzo in Italian means barley. Barley that has been toasted and ground.

So it’s naturally without caffeine, it’s full of minerals and it’s very good for you. Ground barley coffee. I’ve never tried that in my life. I never even heard about it. But this is something you find everywhere in Italy. – Everywhere. – Okay, let’s try the orzo. Do we do a little cheer?

Orzo coffee cheer. – What do you think about it? – Wow! It tastes like black coffee, but a little bit fainter. – But also a little bit sweeter. – Yes! You wrote a book just now called Cucina Povera. What is what is Cucina Povera about?

Cucina Povera is a traditional way of eating here in Italy. Cucina Povera is eating locally, seasonally, using everything you have. So respecting the ingredients and respecting leftovers. Okay. So we started with coffee and orzo. What’s our next stop? Next stop, we’re going to have some street food.

Fueled with an orzo and a traditional espresso, we are off to taste our first delicacy, a traditional street food that is made out of chickpeas. Okay, so we’re now actually going into the kitchen to see how they make the torta di ceci. Is that how you pronounce it? Torta di Ceci!

Okay, let’s go. The owner, Nicola, showed us how this local specialty is prepared. It all starts with a batter of chickpea flour and water, which he made a few hours earlier. He removes any residue foam because it would burn in the oven. After greasing a tray with oil

And adding some of the oil to the batter. It’s ready to be baked. It’s needs a very hot oven, 380 Celsius degrees. The temperature has to be a little bit higher on top and lower on the bottom. This bakes a perfect chickpea flour cake. In a furious spectacle, the liquid chickpea batter

Begins to caramelize and turns into a delicate cake. Nicola slices it up and seasons it with nothing but a bit of freshly ground pepper. Okay, let’s try it. I’m so excited. I’m going to take a little bit of the crust. It’s really crunchy. I can hear it with you.

So Nicola is in the back. He made it. – Nicola – So good, buonissima. Wow. And the roasted flavor. And then black pepper. That is very, very typical for the chickpea flour cake. – The pepper. – It’s kicking in. This is. I mean, this is bonkers. It’s chickpeas and water and pepper.

The flavor is so intense, especially those little crusty bits. Look at that. It’s like the perfect little bit of caramelization going on here. And literally the whole bit crunch on top, crunch on the edges, crunch on the bottom. But so much flavor. Come on. Next up, we’re visiting one of Giulia’s favorite restaurants,

Ristorante Da Beppino for a traditional Cucina Povera lunch. Okay, so here we have our panzanella. And I’ve just been with Mariana in the kitchen, she showed us how to prepare it. She explained as well. It is the ultimate Cucina Povera. Yes, because you’re using what you have available at home. Exactly.

So stale bread and what you have in your garden. With fresh bread it doesn’t work because you have to soak the bread in water and it brings the bread back to life. Wonderful, so that’s our Panzanella first one in Tuscany. Super excited. – Let’s tuck in. Exactly. – Let’s dig in.

I’m trying to get everything on one fork because I think you have to taste all the flavors together. The bread soaks up all the flavors. I don’t notice that the bread doesn’t have salt. When you try the bread, if you do not expect that, it’s like there’s something wrong with this bread,

Like it’s missing something and it’s the salt. But since there’s no salt, it dries up easily. The salt attracts humidity so the bread can get moldy. Tuscan bread doesn’t get moldy, can be rock hard, but always good to use. I can say that stale bread is the staple ingredient of Tuscan cuisine.

More than pasta, more than rice, no, stale bread. And then we have our papa al pomodoro And you said this is a soup? – Yes, a thick soup – It’s a very thick soup. It’s a pappa, in the name it has already the sense of comfort.

Pappa is something you eat with a spoon. Okay. So first time tasting pappa al pomodoro. Good spoon there with a lot of olive oil. It’s so. It’s so hearty. It’s such a safe choice wherever you are pobably in Tuscany to always go for a papa al Pomodoro with an entire book written

About traditional cucina povera dishes. I wanted to see how Giulia makes her favorite comfort food from scratch. The ingredients are simple tomatoes, fresh basil, stale bread, and a special local garlic variety. Garlic. This is a local variety of garlic. It’s called aglione. Very mild garlic that it won’t cause problems in the digestion

And it’s called also the garlic of kiss, because you can kiss someone after you had this and you’re not stinking. Giulia starts by peeling the tomatoes. The easiest way for this is to score them before blanching them in boiling water for just a minute until the skin opens up like this

Once cooled down in water, the peel comes off and the tomato is cut into pieces. Then it’s time for the best kitchen tools. Our hands. So I’m crushing that with my hands because I don’t want tomato sauce or tomato puree. I want bigger pieces of tomatoes with some juice.

And now you’re peeling the aglione and you’ve got one here. And she wasn’t lying. This is, oh god, this is a massive piece of garlic. That’s one clove. That is one. That is one garlic clove. I mean, I have to say I love garlic,

So I’m not opposed to the idea of having this as a normal sized garlic clove. The aglione will melt into the sauce. So Giulia cuts huge chunks and cooks them together with olive oil, salt, chili flakes and the crushed tomatoes. With the the sauce blipping away, it’s time to rehydrate

The stale bread for a few minutes in water. What you want to do is squeeze out the water and then you crumble the bread. I like to have some bigger pieces, especially the crust, because again, this gives texture to the soup. Her grandmother’s secret is to add

A little bit of tomato paste for a richer flavor and color. Then the bread and a bit more water are mixed into the pan and stirred and cooked until the pappa has beautifully thickened. But even after adding fresh basil and a generous amount of olive oil, it’s not done

Quite yet because the pappa al Pomodoro needs to rest. I was really amazed that in Tuscany you find chestnuts being used in a lot of dishes. It’s a very common ingredient. Actually. Chestnut flour is even more common than chestnuts because chestnuts have a very short season. While chestnut flour

Can be used throughout the winter and it’s common in many dishes. You mentioned a dish. Castagnaccio. – Castagnaccio, correct. – What is Castagnaccio? Castagnaccio is a chestnut flour cake. It was born as a vegan and gluten free and a sugar free dish. Let’s make a Castagnaccio. – Let’s make it – Wonderful.

First, the flour is mixed with a little bit of water. I haven’t done anything for the pappa al Pomodoro, so now I am finally being put to work. Then more water and oil is mixed in to form a thin batter. Castagnaccio is seasoned with a little bit of salt and flavored with pine

Nuts, chunky pieces of walnuts and raisins that have been soaked in Vin Santo, a sweet dessert wine. And now we pour everything into this pan. My grandmother’s pan, quite old, but it works perfectly. It’s seasoned. Yes, it has stood the test of time. Oil in first.

And we have to be generous because the castgnaccio is almost frying in the olive oil. So you have to have the olive oil coming over the Castagnaccio when you pour it. Okay and the olive oil is working its… look at that. Finally it’s topped with extra walnuts, pine nuts and some rosemary.

– Into the oven? – Yes, hot oven. Off we go. – All right – Bye bye. Okay. That gives us time to taste the pappa. Let’s go! Wow. That is comfort on a different level. Okay. And our Castagnaccio is done. It’s the first time in my life that I’m trying this.

I’ve never had any dessert with chestnut flour, so I’m super, super excited. And the ingredients are completely incredible to me. Wow. There’s so many things going on. It’s wonderful. So it’s so, so nice because it’s so moist. It’s not. It’s not a dry cake. Why do we invent flour

That is made gluten free when we have things like that? I really don’t understand because this is so tasty. This is a good secret of Tuscany. No more. I’m sold. I’m a fan. Chestnut flour here we go. After my first taste of Tuscany, I’m heading deeper into the countryside to find an answer

To a question that’s always been on my mind. What would a vegan farming system look like? So we’ve arrived at I Pini, which is here behind me, and it’s set in this idyllic location in the middle of the Tuscan hills. And here we’re going to learn about veganic farming,

Which is a farming system that works entirely without using animal manure. Meet Lahiri, the head chef of Agrivilla I pini. Lahiri is going to show me how to cook one of Tuscany’s most traditional dishes. But before we hit the stoves, he’s taking me on a tour

To prove that nature’s abundance is all around us. So we’re now in the herb garden here. Behind us are loads and loads of herbs. Our first stop is… this one is called them the salt plants because it’s able to extract the minerals and the salt from the soil.

And then it puts the salt in its leaves. So you should definitely try it. You can… you can dry these and use it a bit like a salt. So much! Salty and tangy! But despite salty and tangy leaves, there are tons of herbs and once they blossom,

The flowers, you guessed it, are edible. Never tried a rosemary flower. So this is it. Okay? Floral rosemary. It takes away the woodiness. And we have some beautiful flowers from the sage. The name Salvia comes from the Roman ‘save’. So basically is the plant that saves us. Let’s try a sage flower.

You just do like this, you pick literally the… The bud. The bud. And it tastes gently like sage. It’s quite juicy. It’s spicy. It’s spicy. – It gives me a little bit of ginger. – Yes. This garden is not only packed with herbs, these are pomegranate shrubs.

And that means that each of these blossoms will eventually grow into a single fruit. Here we’ve got calendula, which is planted amongst other produce to keep pests away. And you’ve probably seen this before in a slightly different form. This is the beautiful flower of the artichoke.

It attracts so many pollinators and bees and wild bees. That’s why we don’t pick all the artichokes. So next up, we’ve had Nasturtium. Nasturtium exactly. It’s quite peppery and sweet at the same time. – Yeah. – What?! It’s so amazing. You’ve got, you eat a flower and you have so many associations.

But that’s the thing about food, right? Once you are not limited to what you know from a supermarket, suddenly you have way more possibilities. Okay, we’re now heading into the veg patch with Lahiri, look at that behind me. It’s opening up here. We have some beautiful ripe tomatoes.

Tomatoes, which have ripened on the plant. So and then all the all the nutritious things are going to be inside. The flavor is more complex because usually the people that harvest tomato to sell, they pick it when it’s green, and then they ripen,

Let’s say, in the fridge or however not on the plants. You can see that it is organic because there is some little insect that took the benefit as well to eat. I’m just craving to taste a ripe tomatoe straight off the plant. Look, ah, bright red and also you smell the vine.

Yeah it’s quite beautiful. looks juicy. That is juicy! It should be salty as well. – And savory and sweet. – That is savoury! It’s everything. It’s very easy to make a beautiful food with this type of produce because all you need is olive oil and maybe a little salt.

The magic lies in how it’s grown. Oh you can taste that, this is so good. After seeing the tomatoes, courgettes with their flowers and more herbs like green and purple basil, it was time to reveal one of the secrets of veganic farming.

So this one is wild spinach just going to cut it up a little bit. This one as well is acacia. They fix nitrogen into the ground. Here we have some old borage, which has gone pretty much into seeds. So and then now the pollinators, they don’t really need this one anymore.

So at the moment, we’re cutting up wild plants all over the garden here and all over the patch. And Lahiri is making a liquid manure out of that. So not to use animal manure. After you collected the wild plants that grow around you, and then you can just water it up.

Now, we’re going to leave it for about three, four or five days. I’m going to leave it for the yeasts and the bacteria to start to ferment it. This is the finished product you can see is going on a type of fermentation. So that’s what happened, the fermentation, the yeast

Or the bacteria they’re extracting the nutrients and then they release it into the water. Soon I’m going to take the solids, the leaves away, and then we’re going to dilute it into a ratio of 1 to 10 or 1 to 20, depending on how strong it is.

And then we’re going to water it. Whenever we water our plants and it’s going to give back a lot of nutrients. Yeah, it’s starting to smell a little bit and we have some charcoal here, so if you want, I’m gonna show you so this charcoal is going to act as a

Smell, bad smell reduction, it’s going to basically absorb all the smell, but also is going to absorb all the nutrients. Every single piece of charcoal is going to become like a microbe or bacteria hotel. So this one is the compost area. Twice a day, the kitchen staff is coming in and is pouring

The kitchen waste and we put some woodchips in between just to make sure that the fermentation is a Aerobic. So with oxygen we also put the charcoal, the biochar of course, to neutralize the smell, but also to be charged of bacteria, to be charged of nutrients. Whenever we

Going to use the compost it’s going to have this biochar as well is going to be so beneficial to the to the soil. Okay I think we’ve got enough ingredients so far. I could go on and on explaining all that we have but I think now we can start cooking.

So we’re going to make the sauce for a pici all’aglione. Pici all’aglione. But it’s are different type of pici. I put my twist in it and I did nettle pici. That’s the nettle powder? That’s the nettle powder which is the nettle that I harvested locally before they went to flowers.

Nettle, it’s really a superfood. It’s got seven times the vitamin C of oranges. It’s got the same amount of calcium like cheese, and it’s got it got more protein than soy. Nettles? Yeah. So in 100g of dry nettles, it’s got 40% of protein. So, so 100g grams of dry nettle is basically 40

– grams of protein. – What?! A leaf?! – Basically. – It’s a leaf… – A Herb – it’s a wild plant. Okay, let’s, let’s make the pici all’aglione with nettle. As the name suggests, the star of the show is, of course, aglione, a giant garlic variety that is much sweeter

And milder in taste than normal garlic. It first gets blended together with olive oil, water and salt to make a smooth sauce. In a moment reminiscent of Goodfellas, Lahiri also sliced some of the garlic for extra texture and flavor and sautéd it with a little olive oil in the pan.

Add the blended sauce, cook it down, and soon you’re left with an incredibly fragrant cream of aglione. And then it’s time for the fresh tomatoes. They too get chopped up and blended with nothing else but a bit of water. After straining them, a little bit of Passata

Is added to intensify the color and flavor before it’s also poured into the pan. A tomato sauce blipping away on its own is often a clue that pasta is not far away and today it’s made fresh. Okay, so now we’re going to start the making of pici all’ortica with nettle. So green pici.

First, a little bit of hot water is mixed into the nettle powder to draw out the color. Then it’s added to a mixture of semi-integrale, which is a light whole wheat flour and durum wheat flour, along with some olive oil. Under constant mixing more and more warm water is added

Until the dough begins to take shape. And finally looks like this. So yeah, our dough is ready. As you can see, it’s quite soft. Looks like it’s elastic is perfect. To let the gluten develop, it’s coated with a bit of oil and refrigerated for an hour before the next step.

Tomatoes are acidic, so a little bit of sugar is added to the sauce to balance it out. Then it’s time to crack on with the pici A piece of the dough is rolled out into a flat disk, then cut into thick ribbons. And now we’re going to start the process,

Which here in Tuscany they call it picare. So it’s basically making the shape of the pici. By pinching the ribbons and rolling it over the surface A thick pasta begins to take shape. – So pinch them – and then roll it. They don’t look as smooth as yours.

I mean, pici is quite rustic. – Cut in half – cut in half. And then we’ve made our pici. One by one, the fresh pici fill the tray, a testament that as so often with the cooking of the poor, the food is more affordable in price because of the investment of time

And labor, as well as a lack of expensive ingredients. Pici is naturally egg free. So it doesn’t contain fresh egg as many fresh pasta do because it’s from Cucina Povera. Finally, the pici are boiled until they just begin to feel al dente before they are gently mixed together with the sauce

And finished cooking in the pan. I think we’re done. The sauce is quite thick, our pici they are cooked. and now we can plate it up and we can taste it. With a bounty from the garden all laid out it’s show time for the many different edible flowers.

Okay and we’ve finished our pici all’aglione. I’m so excited. So garnished with flowers that we picked minutes ago in the garden. Allora. Come on. Grab a fork. look at that. So much sauce. It’s so rich. Here we go. So look at the pici, we’ve got flowers on there, loads of sauce.

And it’s so simple. It’s so simple. But the first thing you got is the flowers. – Yeah – because they are right on top. Yeah. Yeah. You get a little hint of nice edible flowers, but it’s quite subtle. And then that tomato sauce is coming in.

Fresh tomatoes picked moments ago in the garden. I have to say that experience of seeing you pick them walk with you in the garden, seeing you prepare the tomatoes, that’s all part of eating the dish. And then when you eat it, you remember. You remember all of it.

So a simple dish becomes quite complex and memorable. There’s so much garlic in there, but it just adds a really nice underlying… Happy? -Very good. – Exactly. Buono. What a dish. And the nettle. It’s not, it’s not overpowering at all. Not at all. Just in the background

But what still amazes me about that is the, the 40% protein on a plant based diet that is really valuable because obviously, when you’re looking at this dish, there’s no legumes added, there’s nothing there’s no protein apart from the flour, which has a natural source of protein.

But by adding nettle, nettle out of all things, something that grows wild here, you’re adding protein to that dish. So it makes it so, so valuable. It’s just before 6 a.m. early start because I’m heading to a local bakery. There’s a lot to be said about Tuscan bread

Because it’s sort of infamous for not having any salt. And I am heading to a local bakery to see how they make Tuscan bread and learn what that’s all about. Here we go. I arrived at I Seminanti and they are a slow food bakery here in Tuscany near San Miniato

And they are a seed to Bread Bakery. So they grow their own wheat, then they mill it and then they bake bread with it. And I’m going to see how they make Tuscan bread. This is Emanuele, one of two brothers who run I Seminanti. Today He’s making three different loaves

With three different grains, all using a similar process that starts with water, salt, flour and a sourdough starter. But if Tuscan bread is infamous for being made without salt, then why did Emanuele add any? After mixing it for just a few minutes, the dough is transferred to large buckets for the first fermentation.

With the first batch out of the way, Emanuele cracked on with two more doughs. One made with the ancient gentil rosso wheat, the other made with the oldest cereal in the world. Farro Monococco, also known as einkorn. Then it’s time to light the oven because this one needs some time to heat up.

But what do you see here is in fact only half the oven. The rest of the design lies hidden underneath. So Emanuele made us a little breakfast here because we started really early at 6 a.m. He just sliced some bread, toasted it on the stones here, which are really hot. Grazie mille.

And then he has a caciofi, so an artichoke spread on top. Let’s try that warm bread, literally toasted here in the wood oven. That is a perfect breakfast. I don’t need more. After the first fermentation, the dough is tipped out onto the bench, where it is weighed and shape by hand.

What looks so easy under Emanuele’s confident moves is really the product of years of experience. The shaped sourdough is then placed into the proving baskets for the final fermentation. So Emanuele just prepared the oven again and you put all of the coals inside into the bottom bit.

So now the oven is being heated from the bottom and then the cecina went in, so the torta di ceci and four trays of those are in the oven now. And in 3 minutes they’re already done. Okay, so the cecina just came out of the oven and it’s freshly here, so we’re

Just going to try a piece. Grazie. Freshly made cecina. E buona? Buona! Arrosto. It has this nice smoky flavor from the oven on top. – Buona. – Bene. Come on. And then it’s finally time to bake the bread. After a quick dusting of the peel, the bread is tipped out,

Scored and transported into the depth of the oven. Once all the breads are tucked inside, Emanuele closes the door And the smile ha ha! But that’s not quite enough. It’s sealed with some raw dough to trap in all of the heat and create the perfect environment for woodoven baked breads.

Okay, it’s time the bread is ready, so behind me steam is coming out of the oven, he’s opening it now. After brushing off the excess flour and any of the ashes, the warm bread is packed up, ready to go straight to today’s farmer’s market. But in the meantime I’m in for another treat.

As I learned at the beginning of this Tuscany trip, Panzanella is one of the traditional Cucina Povera dishes, making use of what’s available right now. Today that is cucumber, onion, fresh basil, tomatoes and stale bread that’s been rehydrated in water and crumbled into the salad.

Season it with salt, vinegar and olive oil and… I’m following Emanuele outside now because we are having the panzanella for lunch outside in the garden, the sun is out. What a day. But before we can tuck into the panzanella, it’s time to taste today’s fresh bread. Okay, so we’ve waited long enough.

The bread is ready. And here we go. E Caldo. It’s still warm. It’s still warm… e profumo… You can just smell the grain. It’s so wonderful. We’ve seen it from start to finish. So he says you don’t need the salt because the flavor is in the grain.

And it’s true. It is really true. And I have to say, although you don’t taste salt, you don’t miss it. Maybe because he added a little bit, but you don’t miss it at all. So… Wonderful! So the table is set behind me. We’re going to have the Panzanella now

With the fresh bread next to it. I can’t wait. Lunch with the family. This is so exciting. That was the end of my first episode here in Tuscany. But I’ve got a second episode coming up, so stay tuned for classics like Ribollita, Tuscan Street Food and Locally Made Pasta. See you soon.