Lento: Tuscany I: Villa Bordoni

To prepare us for Tuscany before we left we bought some diffusers with scents like Tuscan Breeze, ate Toscani pasta from Pizza Hut, and we even tried to plan a visit to the Olive Garden Cooking School in Tuscany. But we weren't accepted because in our sample recipe we pushed the envelope too far with a five cheese ravioli and Nutter Butters crumbled on top.

Alright guys. I couldn't help note the way the tag of Tuscan is slapped on innumerable products to lend credibility. But I put effort into not being jaded, and I will say that although Tuscany seems cliche, it's really that spectacular to me. For all the photos and oil paintings of Tuscan landscapes I've seen, I can't get enough of them. And when we were actually there I wanted to just pull to the side of the road, take out a couple lawn chairs and soak the real thing in for hours.

Maybe that's why so many people who've been to Italy say it's the place they want to go back to, a place they'd like to have a second house. Because it's the antithesis of the rat race so many of us live in here. For instance, we arrived in Tuscany at the perfect time. Rome was great, but it's pazzo. Poor us. After four days there we were ready for some space, a lower tempo and greens-ery.

I can't say enough about how connected to the surrounding earth you feel there. We only drank wine from the Chianti zone during our stay, mainly bottles from vineyards in the hills encompassing Greve. There was no reason to drink anything else.

I'll only speak for myself and say it was an amazing experience, but I know Nicole appreciated it as well. It makes me want to move to northern California, where so much of our produce comes from, or just to upstate Connecticut, our own burgeoning small farm country.

Every morning we started the day with Villa Bordoni's exceptional fruit salad, and I know the fresh apricots it was filled with came from the tree on the drive up where they were littering the ground. It wouldn't matter even if the ones we ate were taken from the ground, 'cause I'd eat off it.

Aside from Siena, where we had the worst meal of the entire trip (Elio's pizza I reckon) the food was consistently good, made with care and utilizing raw materials of the highest quality. This is why you go to the country or the burbs in Italy to eat well without trying as hard. Proprietors know tourists still account for a big share of their income in places like Tuscany, but considering their surroundings it's hard not to be happy, and they can more easily maintain tradition that is challenging in constantly evolving city culture. If you serve produce taken from your garden or ingredients from local purveyors you trust, you're not going to want to cut corners and serve up mediocre dishes to people. You want the few products on any given plate to shine--Italian cooking in a nutshell. Think about it; you don't have to be in Italy to know how full of pride itals are about a lot of things, none more than food.

Villa Bordoni is perched a mile or so above the town of Greve, up a winding and very narrow road that gives you a little hell your first time up to it. But when you finally arrive there after about ten minutes and a mouthful of dust things mellow out very quickly. The staff are warm and genuine, welcoming you in for a drink to help settle you in to one of the twelve unique rooms in the estate once owned, like so many country villas, by a Florentine family. It had fallen on bad times and was pretty decrepit when the current owners found and bought it.

Whereas English gardens are proper and orderly, Tuscan gardens are wild and teeming, with lavender and huge bushes of sage dominating, honey bees and bumble bees buzzing all over the place and gorging on the variety of nectars. There were the requisite cypress lining the drive, some lemon trees in the back courtyard, olive groves around the perimeter of the house and grape vines in every direction. The sound of cicadas was ever-present, just pure summertime.

Staying in a villa, albeit a full service one with pool and restaurant, was definitely the way to go for us. You don't get it via day trips from the cities. You can certainly go the agriturismo route, very rewarding I'm sure, but we were newlyweds and we can't kid ourselves that we really wanted to rough it. Bordoni produces both olive oil and wine, which we sampled repeatedly, but neither are quite ready for retail yet. So you just have to enjoy them while you're there.

We originally thought we'd use the villa primarily as a home base for day trips all over the Tuscan map. Maybe take a dip in the pool after a long day of being out and about. But as it turned out we were very content to stay around Greve, hopping on the SR 222 occasionally to go between historic towns in the Chianti Classico zone, never straying more than an hour away.

I mean you have a pool, a full service and good restaurant on premises, a very friendly cat that lounges around the courtyard and the countryside to breath in, so why rush to leave?

We ate at Bordoni's restaurant for lunch and dinner a bunch of times in 4 days/nights, and the last time we went for the tasting menu, which changed daily. The above dish is Pappa al Pomodoro, tomato sauce thickened with old bread into a porridge, and this was served with some pancetta to garnish and a reduction of balsamic. Pappa al Pomodoro is right in my wheelhouse, a great use for old bread, peasant sustenance. I think of it more as a Fall and Winter dish because it's thick and sticks to the ribs, but served warm rather than hot it's just fine on a summer eve. The balsamic looked cool, but since it's not a Tuscan product I could have done without it, not that I made a stink though.

For the primo we had paccheri filled with pecorino toscano and ricotta in a tomato sauce, garnished with basil oil. Pecorino toscano isn't necessarily as salty as that of Rome, and cut by the creamy ricotta it was a cheese lover's delight. The sauce was a smooth and simply tomato with balanced sweetness and acidity. When I see a dish with paccheri on a menu I am probably going to order it.

One of the many local wines we drank during our stay. We almost forgot wine existed in other places for the time being. Not that chianti is the end-all of Italian wine, but the balanced acidity and tannins and the slight fruitiness pair so well with the cuisine of the area. We enjoyed the variations and nuances of so many different bottles from a pretty small geographical area.

For the secondo, some almost bloody beef tagliata from the renowned Falorni butcher down the hill in the main square of Greve, served with a salad of arugula and fennel. Nicole was a little put off by the straight-from-butcher-to-plate-with-a-short-stop-on-a-grill treatment, but it's a more rustic interpretation of bistecca alla fiorentina to me. A little fattier and harder to chew, but good natural flavor. Whether you liked it or not, it was quite a helping. The salad was very good; crunchy and peppery arugula, fragrant fennel in a nicely acidic vinaigrette to help digest all that cow.

For dessert a coffee flavored gelato with whipped cream and chopped nuts to garnish. Simple and refreshing, and so it goes in Toscana.

The best friend we made at Bordoni, Mima. She actually belonged to a family down the road who summer in Greve. Every day she'd come by the property and greet us in the morning on our way to the pool. Not a beggar, just a perfect fixture for the villa, often sprawled out in the sun on the stone patio by day, and there again at night wanting more attention.