CORTONA | Traditional food and wine

The traditional food in Cortona and the area nearby

Cortona, as all Tuscany and Italy, has got an important gastronomic tradition. The culinary heritage of Cortona is influenced by all the rural traditions of the Valdichiana. Nowadays on the table of the Cortona’s locals, and also in restaurants inside the town, we could find typical recipes that come from the past. A typical Cortona meal could start with the tasty bruschette, some toasted slices of bread that are topped with extra virgin olive oil produced by the local farms, with the supplement of black cabbage, if it is autumn or winter. This vegetable is widely used in the Tuscan tradition, in fact it is the basis of lots of recipes in Tuscany. One of the typical Tuscan sauces for the croutons is the so-called crostino nero, “black” one, that is traditional of this area and the area nearby. Among the first courses there are the soups, particularly the ones made with fresh vegetables, even if the pici are the kings of tables in Cortona. It is a kind of handmade pasta a little bit thicker than spaghetti, made with water and flour, throw a process called appicciatura. The pici are well matched with sauces meat based or nana based (nana is the dialect word for female duck). Other sauces are bread crumbs based or made with tomatoes and aglione della Valdichiana IGP (a typical big garlic that grows only in Valdichiana and that is PGI). Other culinary specialities from Cortona are influenced by the ancient habit of hunting through the woods of Valdichiana. For this reason, lots of second courses are hunting meat based, as wild boar or roe deer. But also, other meats are used to make the sauce for pasta, as the meats of farm animals like rabbits, chicken and ocio (male duck), that once were originally cooked at the end of summer, when farmers used to do the threshing of the wheat, and the duck were offered to the farmers at the end of the work as a thankfulness for their job. The ocio is usually cooked roast in the oven, but it is also used to make the sauce of the pasta, and this type of pasta is really delicious! If you find this on the menu of the restaurants in Cortona, you should try it!
Among desserts there are some of them you can’t miss to taste, as castagnaccio, a cake made with chestnut flour, the rice fritters and the ciaramiglia, a typical cake made during the Easter period.  You could try all this delicious food in the restaurant of the city centre, where you could eat the typical food of Tuscany and Italy.