What I always keep in my pantry for cooking classes
The essential ingredients that make every cooking class possible + my mum’s Tuscan herb salt recipe
March is the month when everything begins again. After refurbishing our studio, giving it a thorough cleaning and a fresh coat of paint, it was time to restock the pantry before the first cooking classes of the season.
During winter I try to finish every open bag of flour and nuts and slowly empty the freezer. But when spring arrives, I go through every shelf and start filling the pantry again. It is a joyful moment, full of hopes and possibilities.
Cooking from the pantry is creative, affordable, and freeing. Where some might see a constraint, I see the beginning of dozens of possible recipes. This is what I try to teach during my cooking classes: how inspiring a well-stocked pantry can be.
And this is why I can start every class with the same question: What would you like to cook today?
We do not work with fixed menus. I prefer to build the class around the season, the ingredients we find at the market, and the personal preferences of my students. And that is only possible because, after the market, I can rely on a well-stocked pantry filled with versatile ingredients.
Today I’d like to walk you through the ingredients that form the backbone of my pantry, the foundation of my cooking repertoire, and the smart allies that make every cooking class possible.
None of these ingredients are luxurious in themselves, but together they make Italian cooking possible.
So, without further ado, let’s open the cupboard and take a look inside. If you’re building your own Italian pantry, this is where I would start.
Extra virgin olive oil
I could not start with anything else. How many bottles do I keep in my pantry? Well, there’s the extra virgin olive oil I use for cooking: it is of average good quality, 100% Italian–often organic–extra virgin olive oil.
Along with the extra virgin olive oil I use for cooking, I always keep an excellent extra virgin olive oil: it might be our own olive oil, a local one, or an olive oil from a producer I know and love, or maybe a DOP or IGP olive oil, either from Tuscany or from other parts of Italy. I am especially fond of extra virgin olive oil from Sicily and from Puglia, or from Liguria when it comes to baking with it.
I drizzle this olive oil on bruschetta, toasted bread rubbed with garlic, on beans, and I pour it into tiny bowls with a good pinch of salt to serve it as a casual appetizer alongside some raw seasonal vegetables to dip in it, such as artichokes, radishes, cucumbers, carrots, or celery. This is what we call pinzimonio in Italian.
I also keep in my pantry an organic vegetable oil – sunflower usually – that I generally use for frying when I do not want to use extra virgin olive oil.
I use a sunflower oil also when I make torta di ceci, a chickpea cake from the Tuscan coast, a recipe which is a perfect example of the kind of food you can make just by using ingredients from your pantry. Add seasonal vegetables like cavolo nero, spring onions or zucchini flowers and it becomes a respectable meal or a clever appetizer, naturally gluten free and vegan.
Salt
Even though our Tuscan bread is typically bland, unsalted–or sciocco as we call it–, we are quite generous when it comes to using salt in cooking. Or at least, I am. During my cooking classes, everyone laughs at the size of my drop of olive oil and pinch of salt, so I started defining them as an Italian drop of olive oil and an Italian pinch of salt, which I usually make using three fingers, not two.
I’ve always felt ok in using the needed amount of salt in food, but after reading Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, I feel even more empowered to use salt, when needed, and in the right amount, not only to give flavour, but to make a dish.
Which kind of salt do I use?
Fine sea salt for cooking, coarse sea salt for pasta water, both unrefined and from Sicily. Then I have a precious jar of Maldon salt, a wonderful flaky sea salt from England, which I buy by the bucket, that I use to finish a dish, as a tomato salad or chocolate cookie.
Then, I always have a jar of my mum’s Tuscan rub salt on my kitchen shelf, made with salt, black pepper, sage, rosemary and garlic. You’ll find the recipe at the bottom of this email behind the paywall.
Herbs and spices
We do not use many spices in Tuscan cooking: black pepper is definitely the most used, from curing the prosciutto to sprinkling over cannellini beans or chickpeas. Nutmeg, one of the most loved spices in the Renaissance times, which at that time was worth more than gold, is my go-to spice especially when making gnocchi, spinach and ricotta tortelli maremmani, and béchamel sauce for lasagna.
Along with black pepper and nutmeg, I also use juniper berries for game meat, fennel seeds (or fennel pollen) for pork, and aniseeds for some old-fashioned cakes.
Seasonally I would also buy the panforte and cavallucci spice mix, essential to make the Sienese christmas treats.
Cinnamon and vanilla (fresh, fat pods that I buy from a friend who has a vanilla plantation in Sao Tomè) are the spices I use when baking: I couldn’t imagine my apple olive oil cake without cinnamon, or pastry cream without vanilla (or lemon zest).
And what about fresh herbs?
I’m not mentioning herbs among my pantry staples because Italian cooking relies on fresh herbs rather than on dried ones. So my herbs are not part of my spice rack, as they grow out in the garden. Alongside perennials such as rosemary, sage, thyme and bay leaves, there are annual herbs like mint, oregano, chives, and marjoram that are showing off right now with tender green leaves. It’s too early for parsley and basil, which will flourish in the summer.
The only dry herb that I love and use generously in my cooking is oregano, something I buy once a year when I visit my in-laws in Puglia in the summer.
Flour
I could not imagine a pantry without flour, could you? But which kind of flour?
Without getting too specific or geeky about flour, I stock several different varieties of wheat flour: more and less refined, stoneground, from 00 (the most refined, which I usually do not like) to whole wheat. I choose a strong one for bread or focaccia (with a high percentage of proteins), and a weak one (with a low percentage of proteins) for shortcrust (the base of jam crostata) and biscotti.
I stock rye flour, which I like to add to all-purpose flour when I make pici, and durum wheat semolina, which I use for pasta along with a type 0 wheat flour to make egg pasta dough, or on its own to make cavatelli and orecchiette. I also keep a jar of chickpea flour, too, to make torta di ceci.
As for the chestnut flour, I keep it in the freezer, as it is a very perishable flour. It is a traditional flour, known also as farina dolce, sweet flour, used to make necci, chestnut flour pancakes, castagnaccio, and, in small quantities, in pasta and biscotti.
Tomatoes
Even though tomatoes are definitely more typical of a Southern cuisine, my family has always preserved tomatoes during summer for the winter. We make both tomato puree, passata, and tomato sauce with celery, carrot and onion, pomarola, and canned peeled tomatoes, pelati.
Tomato paste was my grandma’s secret ingredient, which she used in ragù, soups, and stews, so I always have at least two little tubes in my pantry.
Now I keep the few jars of pelati and passata we make during the summer for our weekly pizza, and buy excellent quality peeled tomatoes and puréed tomatoes for our cooking classes (lately I’ve been loving the organic passata made with Tuscan tomatoes in Mugello by L’Unica)
Where and how I use my stash of preserved tomatoes:
pappa al pomodoro, the Tuscan tomato bread soup. I use fresh peeled tomatoes in the summer, or canned tomatoes in winter.
Tuscan ragù or, my favourite during classes as it is a tasty shortcut, sausage ragù
a quick tomato sauce, either with aglione, the elephant garlic typical of Tuscany, and my favourite dressing for pici, or slow cooked onions.
to re-cook meatballs or fried cutlets
Anchovies
These small, humble fish are brimming with flavour. They can become your secret ingredient in the kitchen when slowly melted in warm olive oil. They add an umami boost not only to seafood dishes and soups, but also to meat stews and braises, to salad vinaigrettes and vegetable stir-fries. The added flavour is not fishy at all, it just enhances all the other flavors. This is what I keep in my pantry.
Salt-packed anchovies. These anchovies are sold whole, bones, and tail intact, covered in coarse sea salt. You either find them in glass jars in supermarkets, or big cans in local delis. If you’re looking for high quality and an intense anchovy experience, opt for salt-packed anchovies, as the preserving process concentrates the flavor, capturing the briny taste of the sea. Use these anchovies in pasta sauces or vinaigrettes, or to make acciughe al verde, anchovy fillets marinated in a herby sauce.
Oil-packed anchovies. These are salt-packed anchovies that have already been rinsed, filleted, and preserved in oil. If you are a beginner with anchovies and want to tackle them gradually, choose oil-packed anchovies. Search for good-quality jarred or canned anchovies from Italy or Spain, packed in extra virgin olive oil.
Anchovy Paste. This has been a staple in my house for years. I prefer topping my buttered bread with a fillet, but my mum usually smears on some anchovy paste directly from the tube. Use anchovy paste wherever you need some background anchovy flavor in a dish. This is one of the essential ingredients in crostini neri, Tuscan chicken liver crostini, providing savoriness, umami, and a perfect contrast to the sweet chicken livers.
Beans and legumes
One of the most surprising parts of building a Tuscan menu is the role of beans. While everyone expects pasta and meat – and perhaps a Florentine steak – our cuisine relies heavily on beans and vegetables.
Florentine people are known as mangiafagioli, bean eaters, for their undisputed love for legumes.
I make sure to have some local beans–either cannellini, piattellini, or, even better, zolfini, the precious sulphur-coloured creamy beans from Pratomagno–to soak them overnight to be ready for classes. A pressure cooker is my best friend in this case.
How to use cannellini beans:
in a ribollita, the Tuscan bean and Lacinato kale soup, turned into a filling, substantial dish the day after thanks to stale bread that thickens it
spooned on top of a toasted bread and doused with olive oil
served alongside ripe tomatoes and canned tuna in a refreshing summer salad
to make passato di fagioli, Tuscan bean soup: you can serve on its own, or top with croutons, rice, or pastina
to make pasta e fagioli, bean and pasta soup, especially when we make homemade cavatelli
Rice and other cereals
Even though nine times out of then we agree on making fresh pasta during our cooking classes–the charm of mixing flour and eggs and admiring these basic ingredients turn into a soft, silky, pliable and almost transparent sheet is unrivalled–, sometimes I have a request for risotto. I adore making risotto with seasonal vegetables, explaining how a basic recipe can be turned into endless variations once you know how to play with rice, stock, butter, cheese, and the vegetable of your choice.
Watching students stir a pot of risotto is one of my favourite moments during a class: I teach them to pay attention to the texture of rice, to its sound and temperature before adding wine into the pot.
So I always have some Carnaroli rice in my pantry, along with farro or barley for summer salads, studded with tomatoes, capers, olives, and cucumbers, laced with fresh basil, to serve as an appetizer.
Walnuts and other nuts
Do you have a favourite nut? For years I believed almonds were my favourite. I use them when I make pesto instead of pine nuts along with pecorino and basil, wild fennel fronds, or lacinato kale, according to the season. Hazelnuts have always left me quite indifferent, even though I love them paired with chocolate in biscotti.
Recently, though, I find myself reaching out for walnuts more and more often. I love to use them in a salad with radicchio and cheese, or with arugula and apples, to make biscotti with a spoonful of honey, to make pesto with kale or with sage and roasted squash, to make panforte, or even to nibble on as an appetizer along with a cheese platter.
Vinegar
Vinegar is one of those ingredients that rarely gets much attention, yet it plays an essential role in Italian cooking, as it brings the acidity that balances a dish. A splash of vinegar can change a dish completely. I add it to a vinaigrette for bitter greens, a spoonful to brighten a soup, or a few drops over roasted vegetables.
In my pantry you will usually find several kinds of vinegar.
The first is a simple red wine vinegar, which I use for everyday vinaigrettes, or to dress our summer panzanella, a tomato and cucumber bread salad.
Then I stock a more delicate one, such as apple cider vinegar or rice vinegar. In spring I infuse these vinegars with rose petals and elderflowers, and they become the best, flowery dressing for a cucumber salad, or a high summer tomato salad.
And finally, there is balsamic vinegar. Not the syrupy reduction you sometimes find on restaurant plates, but a good, honest balsamic vinegar from Modena. I use it sparingly: a few drops on strawberries, on grilled radicchio, or on Parmigiano.
Limoncello
Especially with the good season, we love to end the meal with a tiny glass of frozen homemade limoncello. This is the recipe I use to make my limoncello every year.
Keep your limoncello in the freezer, and bring it to the table with its frozen bottle and a tray of clinking tiny glasses. It will immediately be welcomed with enthusiastic cheers. Pour a finger of chilled limoncello and please don’t have it like a shot! Instead, sip it slowly as a digestif, savouring its lemony, not overly sweet taste.
Bonus ingredients
I shared the basic ingredients you could find in many a Tuscan kitchen, though I am probably a pantry enthusiast, and I feel a primordial urge to stock my pantry with the best produce of every season, too. If my home kitchen pantry is larger and a bit more eclectic,
To be ready to face almost any request during my cooking class, I also stash my pantry with bags of sugar (granulated, caster, brown, and powdered), baking powder, cocoa powder, homemade coarse breadcrumbs, good dark chocolate, tiny capers, canned tuna to make my summery tomato tonnato, sun dried tomatoes, raisins for castagnaccio, dried mushrooms–especially porcini–for the winter minestrone, home-made jams to accompany cheese, taralli, several jars of home-made cured olives.
If you’re a paid subscriber, below you’ll find my mum’s recipe for sale aromatico alle erbe, the Tuscan fresh herb salt that has been part of our kitchen for as long as I can remember. I keep on my kitchen shelves to sprinkle on meat, fish, focaccia, and roasted potatoes.
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RECIPE - Sale aromatico alle erbe. TUSCAN FRESH HERB SALT
A jar of speckled fresh herb rub salt has been sitting on the counter in my mom’s kitchen since I can remember. Now, that jar - in the same shade of green - is also nestled in my cupboard, in between the fine sea salt and the coarse sea salt. So, whenever I roast a chicken for a Sunday family meal or prepare a tray of potatoes or focaccia, I automatically reach for that salt.