As throughout Tuscany, the Etruscan Coast area offers a wide variety of traditional local dishes. Simple and quick recipes, characterized by fresh, genuine and seasonal ingredients, prepared as in the past or revisited in a modern version by contemporary chefs.
Let’s take a look at some typical dishes from this area:
Cacciucco alla Livornese
Cacciucco is a fish soup typical of Livorno cuisine. Like all recipes of this type, cacciucco originated as a poor man’s dish with which fishermen consumed the unsold catch of the day.
The main ingredients are mixed fish, mantis shrimp, sage, garlic clove, red wine, extra virgin olive oil, salt and black pepper. It is served with slices of toasted bread rubbed with garlic. Today it is one of the prides of Tuscan cuisine!
Boiled Octopus
Octopus cooked in wine or more commonly called boiled octopus is a typical Tuscan recipe, more precisely Livornese, which consists of cooking and soaking the place in red wine. It is the perfect solution as a seafood second course, but it is also great served cold as if it were salad, or even on bruschetta becoming an aperitif or appetizer. The way is unusual to cook octopus, but the result will be very tasty and colorful.
Torta di Ceci
Chickpea Cake is a preparation made from chickpea flour, water, extra virgin olive oil and salt. It is therefore a very simple recipe indeed, in fact it has poor and distant origins in time. Torta di ceci is the name given in Livorno and province, but it is also called farinata di ceci or cecina in other areas. It is enjoyed inside a sandwich named 5 and 5, the most famous street food in Livorno.
Cassatina DAI DAI
A typical “grain” (as they say in Tuscany), however, is Cassatina DAI DAI, a traditional sweet that is offered in Castiglioncello. Fresh milk and cream, egg yolk, wheat flour, chocolate and sugar. Simple ingredients of absolute quality, expertly crafted by hand. Many flavor variations have been created, starting with the original cassatina alla panna, the one that won Toni over so much that he prompted him to create the Gelateria Artigiana Dai Dai in 1984.
