Pici all'Aglione Toscani

Val di Chiana and Siena

‹ Tuscany

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Origin

Val di Chiana and Siena, Tuscany

Description

The pasta of the Val di Chiana and Siena: pici (thick, hand-rolled spaghetti, pencil-thick, irregular, without egg — just water and flour) dressed with a sauce of aglione della Valdichiana (a very large, mild garlic variety unique to the Chiana valley) crushed and slow-melted in olive oil with fresh tomatoes and white wine until a sweet, barely-there garlic-tomato sauce forms. Unlike Amatriciana or pesto, the aglione sauce is not assertive — the colossal garlic cloves have almost no sharpness when slow-cooked and produce a sweet, slightly honeyed tomato sauce with a faint garlic warmth.

III

The Thread

—Both are hand-rolled thick pasta (pici in Tuscany, umbrichelli in Umbria) made from the same water-and-flour formula without egg, dressed with a simple garlic-olive-oil-based sauce — the same pasta tradition on either side of the Tuscan-Umbrian border demonstrates how the same technique expresses through slightly different regional identities Umbrian

—Both are garlic-primary pasta dishes where the garlic is cooked in olive oil before the pasta is dressed — Roman uses regular garlic, sautéed sharp and golden; Tuscan uses aglione, melted sweet and mild — the same conceptual approach to garlic-pasta with opposite flavour outcomes Roman

Flavour Context

Thick, hand-rolled pasta with the gentle sweet warmth of aglione garlic — mild, bright, honeyed from the slow-cooked enormous garlic — uniquely Tuscan simplicity

Pillars V — VII

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