A Tuscany adventure - #3, Pranzo!

The shop in Montemagno

Pranzo!

I am trying to learn Italian. I do find it a bit hard. In fact I find learning anything new harder as you get older. Or, as my friend and host Tage puts it, things are easier to learn now, but more difficult to remember. Anyway, pranzo means lunch, and lunch is not to be taken lightly in Italy. Indeed, no meal is taken lightly, except, perhaps, for la colazione, breakfast.

Coming from Norway I have always been taught that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and Norwegian breakfasts may, like English breakfasts, be a quite substantial meal. But then we would usually have a rather light (and boring) lunch consisting of sandwiches followed by an (in comparison to Italy) early dinner. I should also mention that Norwegian lunches have changed lately and more and more often will consist of a hot meal.

The food regime in Italy, however, seems to be quite different. Norwegians on holiday in this country just cannot understand the Italian breakfast. A cup of coffee and either bread with jam or some sort of pastry. This is just to get the blood sugar up enough to last until lunch.

Lunch, on the other hand, is often what I would consider a whole dinner and is by many regarded as the most important meal and often consists of both starter, main course and dessert. But today I am making a very simple lunch for myself and Gunn who also works at SiToscana.

Italian food is often very simple and relies entirely on a few very good ingredients treated with care. Today I am making a simple pasta dish with ravioli. Here in Montemagno there is a small shop presided over by Liana. She sells bread, cheese, ham, pasta, wine, oil, vegetables and other staple foods. From her I got some very good ravioli, great tomatoes that has actually had time to ripen well in the sun and some cooked ham.

I made a tomato sauce just by cutting the tomatoes in half and heating them in a pan with a bit of olive oil and a dash of Chianti wine. This simmered until it had a sauce like consistency. I actually also had the tomato stalks in there (rinsed, of course) as these also contain lots of flavour. Just remember to take them out before serving! Towards the end of the cooking I added shreds of cooked ham and some more halved tomatoes just to have a bit of texture and something to bite into. I seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper and a pinch of sugar, and the sauce was ready. The ravioli was given three minutes in salted, boiling water, and then lunch was served. Simple and delicious!