From the hills to your kitchen
Tuscan Food & Drink
And the local dishes worth hunting down.
Food in the hills above Pescia isn’t fancy. Chestnuts, beans, homemade pasta, good bread and some of the finest olive oil you’ll ever taste.
Some of these dishes you can make in your own kitchen. Others are best enjoyed at a village festa, where the recipes have been handed down for generations and the locals know exactly how they should taste.
Recipes to cook Local food Wine & olive oil Festivals & traditions
Cook at home
Recipes to cook
Proper Tuscan cooking, no fuss. Each of these has a recipe or method you can follow in your own kitchen, and there’s a new one in every issue of the free magazine.
- Full recipe
Necci
Chestnut flour pancakes
Chestnut flour, water and salt. In the Apennine villages, where wheat wouldn't grow, they did the job of bread.
- Full recipe
Fagioli all'uccelletto
Slow-cooked beans with sage and tomato
A Tuscan classic of beans, sage and tomato. Make it with Sorana beans if you can get them.
- Full recipe
Tordelli lucchesi
Meat-filled pasta with ragù
The name with a “d” is used only around Lucca, Viareggio and the Lunigiana. Everywhere else they're tortelli.
- Full recipe
Castagnaccio
Flat chestnut flour cake
In 1553 the writer Ortensio Lando credited a man called Pilade da Lucca with making the first one.
- Full recipe
Beccutini
Little fried potato-dough fritters
Stiappa's own. Its festa on 15 August has been frying them for more than forty years.
- Full recipe
Zuppa frantoiana
Lucca's olive mill soup
Beans, cavolo nero and winter vegetables, made when the frantoi are pressing and finished with the new oil.
- Quick method
Fettunta
Garlic toast drowned in new oil
The name just means “oily slice”. It's how Tuscans taste the new oil at the frantoio every autumn.
- Quick method
Frugiate
Roast chestnuts
What we call roast chestnuts in the Pescia valley. Vellano gives them a whole festa every October.
Eat it where it’s made
Local food worth hunting down
No recipes here, just the dishes to look out for, where each one comes from, and where to read more.
The hills above Pescia
Beans and village festas
Fagiolo di Sorana
Sorana beans
Grown on the sandy banks of the stream below Sorana and protected as an IGP. Rossini once asked to be paid in them.
Fagioli al fiasco
Beans cooked in a glass flask
An old farmhouse trick. An empty wine flask was filled with beans, water, garlic and sage and left in the embers after the bread was baked.
Lucca and the Garfagnana
Soups, spelt and a famous sweet bread
Garmugia
Spring vegetable soup
First broad beans, peas, artichokes and asparagus. Lucca has been making it since the 1600s.
Read about it: What to eat in the Lucca and Pistoia hills →
LuccaZuppa frantoiana
Bean and cavolo nero soup
Named after the frantoio, the olive mill, where farmers took soup and bread to try the new oil.
Buccellato
Aniseed and raisin sweet bread
Lucca's own. Taddeucci in Piazza San Michele has been baking it since 1881.
Read about it: What to eat in the Lucca and Pistoia hills →
LuccaTorta coi becchi
Sweet chard tart
A Lucca tart with a sweet chard filling. The “becchi” are the little pastry beaks round the edge.
Read about it: What to eat in the Lucca and Pistoia hills →
LuccaFarro della Garfagnana
Spelt
Grown in the Garfagnana valleys north of Lucca and protected as an IGP since 1996.
Read about it: What to eat in the Lucca and Pistoia hills →
The Garfagnana
Pistoia and Montecatini
Feast-day duck and a lot of sugar
Maccheroni sull'anatra
Wide pasta with duck sauce
Pistoia's dish for the feast of its patron saint, San Jacopo, on 25 July.
Read about it: What to eat in the Lucca and Pistoia hills →
PistoiaConfetti di Pistoia
Knobbly sugared sweets
Built up slowly in copper pans. Pistoia was handing them out at San Jacopo as far back as the 1300s.
Read about it: What to eat in the Lucca and Pistoia hills →
PistoiaBrigidini di Lamporecchio
Thin aniseed wafers
Tradition says the nuns of a Santa Brigida convent made the first ones, hence the name.
Cialde di Montecatini
Almond wafers
The spa town's sweet. The Bargilli family have made them since 1936.
Read about it: What to eat in the Lucca and Pistoia hills →
Montecatini
Siena, the south and the feast days
Hand-rolled pasta and Christmas cake
Pici
Fat hand-rolled pasta
Flour, water and salt, rolled by hand in southern Siena province and the Val d'Orcia. Celle sul Rigo has held a pici sagra since 1969.
Panforte
Honey, nut and spice cake
Siena's Christmas cake, recorded in the city as early as 1205.
Ricciarelli
Soft almond biscuits
Descended from the marzipan made in Siena in the 1400s.
Schiacciata di Pasqua
Tall aniseed Easter bread
Baked for Easter in Livorno and Pisa province, with plenty of eggs and aniseed.
In the glass and on the bread
Wine & Olive Oil
The hills around Lucca and Pescia make their own wine and olive oil. Here’s where to find them.
- Guide
Wine tasting near Lucca
Montecarlo, the Lucca hills, Pescia and Pistoia
Colline Lucchesi and Montecarlo DOC wineries, Vin Santo around Pescia, and a farm near Pistoia, with prices, hours and how to book.
The olive harvest
Olio nuovo and the frantoio
October and November, when the nets go down under the trees and the new oil comes out of the mill green and peppery.
Tuscany in November
New oil, truffles and what's open
The best month for the new oil, with truffle fairs and chestnut festas still going.
Eat with the whole village
Food Festivals & Traditions
Sagre, feast days and the seasons that decide what’s on the table.
Sagre month by month
Tuscany's food festivals
A sagra is a village food festival. Here's what's on, and roughly when, through the year.
Sagra del Beccutino
Stiappa, 15 August
On Ferragosto this little village above Pescia turns out for its festa, and the beccutini come out of the fryer.
Festa of the Ham Sandwich
Castelvecchio
Fresh bread stuffed with salty Tuscan ham, in one of the ten castella above Pescia.
Chestnut season
Necci, flour and festas
Autumn in the hills means chestnuts: roasted, milled into flour, and cooked into necci at village festas.
San Miniato white truffle fair
Truffle hunting in Tuscany
The big autumn truffle fair, and how truffle hunting with a dog actually works.
Christmas in Tuscany
Presepi, the Befana and festive food
Nativity scenes, the Befana on 6 January, and panforte with a glass of vin santo.
Easter in Tuscany
Traditions, food and fireworks
Florence's exploding cart, colomba, and the tall aniseed Easter bread of Livorno and Pisa.
Every issue of my free magazine has a Tuscan recipe or two to try at home. Pop your email in and it comes straight to you.
Heading for the hills? My Tuscany Village Journal covers the ten castles above Pescia.