It seems like another era when I think back to the time when I was searching for a name for my first cookbook, which was made up of recipes drawn from my own culinary life and that of my family's, and was therefore almost completely Tuscan. The publishers recoiled in horror at the suggestion that the title should include the words Tuscan or Tuscany as they implied too specialized a subject And so it became The Fine Art of Italian Cooking. How things have changed! Today's readers are fascinated with the idea of cookbooks that uncover the riches of specific regions.
I decided to undertake this second book on Tuscan cooking because I wanted the opportunity not only to share more recipes from the inexhaustible Tuscan repertoire, but because I wanted to immerse my readers in my vision of Tuscany, with its unique and varied landscape, its great villas, palaces and gardens, its vineyards and olive groves, and its art. I also wanted to try to recreate some of the wonderful festivals of my early life.
For my research, I set out on a journey all around Tuscany. Family connections drew me through the countryside and the towns and villages. I experienced many little-known culinary triumphs--some of them in restaurants but most of them in private homes. Because my grandmother was from Siena, my family still belongs to a Sienese contrada and I was able to enter into all the rites connected to the famous Palio horse race, including the huge grilled dinner that is served the evening before the race. I visited an old country priest in a mountain village, a childhood friend of my mother. I went to Arezzo, where my father spent part of his early life. I also drew upon my mother's memories of her grandparents' life at the court of the last Hapsburg Grand Duke of Tuscany and my own memories of my childhood in Florence, my visits to my Sienese grandmother, my summers on the Tuscan coast and the time I spent during my adolescence living on one of the greatest wine estates in Chianti.
I present the fruits of my labor In addition to the well-known dishes from Florence, there are dishes from Lucca and its rich countryside, the Chianti area, and the Arno Valley as well as Arezzo, the Valdichiana and the culinary gold mine of Siena. I present specialties from Tuscany; southern coast and one-time marshlands, called Maremma, home to water buffalo and wild boar and the distinctive cucina of Livorno, one of the repositories of Italian-Jewish cooking. The northern coast, including Viareggio, Massa and Carrara, as well as Pisa, founded by the Greeks or Etruscans and for over a millennium the dominant city of what is now Tuscany, is not ignored. And then there are the two mountainous areas, Casentino and Garfagnana, both boasting many unique recipes, and Pistoia and Pescia, so rich in flowers and vegetables. Nor do I overlook Montalcino and Monte Pulciano, the great wine centers that offer food of equal merit.
What is most fascinating is that all of these areas of Tuscany have maintained separate culinary traditions. To understand how and why, one must only be reminded that this region, the largest in Italy aside from the island of Sicily, has the greatest density of once-independent political units. The union of all of these into modern Tuscany, which occurred for the most part in the fifteenth century, is only a short epoch in their long histories. The people of these areas have an individuality that they do not intend to change. In addition, they have never lost confidence in the virtues of their gastronomy. After all, they have always had superb products: olive oil, sheep, cheeses, grains, wines, pork and beef to name a few. And that same natural sense of aesthetics that produced their unsurpassed art also helped Tuscans to formulate their celebrated cucina. Throughout this book are photos of not only the finished dishes but also the colorful Tuscan festivals, the famed markets and vineyards as well as the incomparable Tuscan architecture, monuments and fine art. Tuscan cucina is forever connected to this landscape, art and history, and that is the way I have tried to present it in this book.

Giuliano Bugialli, 1992