When in Tuscany in the summer, weather you have a kitchen or not, this is one of the best meals to have: figs, ham and bread.
You can certainly reproduce this somewhere else but you know that when a meal is so simple, the quality of the ingredients is essential, and there’s only one place where you can get exactly the right combination of these three things.
- Figs: in Italy they grow more or less everywhere during the summer. They are delicate fruits that tend not to travel because they go bad very quickly, so what you find is mostly from the local market. I like to use the “verdini”, the small green ones that grow on those beautiful trees that you find at the edge of every field.
- Ham: it should be a Tuscan ham, which is quite spicy and peppery, like the one from Pratomagno, near Arezzo. Because Tuscan cold cuts are so savory they are best accompanied by Tuscan bread.
- Tuscan bread. This bread is unique in Italy as it is without salt. If you are not used to it and you eat it on its own you probably won’t be very enthusiastic but in fact it matches perfectly the Tuscan specialties, which are normally very tasty and savory, as it happens for cold cuts.