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Tuscany may be renowned for incredible meat and fine wines, but this food of the rich is only half the story. the other branch of tuscan cooking grew out of biting poverty and humble ingredients. so where do you want to go first? historian leonardo romanelli is taking me to florence's central market to show me the ingredients of what italians call cucina povera. >> a staple of florentine
>> it's very clean. >> just north of the city center in this building, not the whole thing, you understand. >> so our apartment was those four windows? one, two, three, four? that was us on the end there, right? >> yep. >> it was nice. >> but you had never traveled? >> no. my parents, mom and pop said why you going? and, you know. >> your parents who came from italy. >> came from italy. >> didn't want you to go to italy. >> not calabria. it worked out. >> i came for sculpture. certainly joan, the food. cooking. >> it changed everything. it changed everything for me, certainly. while my father ...
Water. >> while she was here, my mother was also inspired by the spirit of the renaissance and set out to discover the art of italian cooking. >> when we lived in florence, when everyone was in school, i was learn to make different recipes. i loved it. >> my mother soon found the key that unlocked so much of italian cooking. a simple combination of carrot, celery, and onions. fried up together, it's called the soffritto. >> looking good. what do you think, stan? >> yeah, it's good. >> throw the tomato in? >> it's the basis of a italian cooking, it's a delicious vegetable sauce, and we named it...
Cacciucco is a rich fish stew that dates back over 500 years. it was the way livorno's fishermen would use up whatever they hadn't sold that day. this is an imperial cacciucco. he's using this really beautiful lobster. it's not a poor fish obviously, so he's taking this and sort of amping it up a bit. >> like so many italian dishes, the base of fabio's stew is the trusty tomato. it's hard to imagine italian cuisine without tomato. scholars only date their arrival to that fortuitous marriage to spanish nobody built in the 1540s. here in livorno, though, legend says the tomatoes was brought by n...
This is the land of pigs, beautiful pigs. i have come to the second biggest city in the region, parma, and these pigs are used to make something that i could never resist. pruscutto. i didn't know there were this many pigs in the world. there aren't any more. this is a shrine to piggy's past, and for something so heavenly, this ham has it's own guardian angels.