Traditional Sienese cuisine can boast a wide variety of dishes, like everywhere in Tuscany, but with a larger use of garlic and aromatic herbs, as tarragon and mint.

Also the handcrafted productions, used by top quality pork butchers to make hams, salami and sausages: soppressate, finocchiona, capocolli, locally called “pilze”, all of which can readily be found locally and have always been popular with food enthusiasts.

Here is a few typical products

Cavallucci

These are fairly large, irregular-shaped biscuits. They have a whitish color, a compact, spongy consistency and taste of walnuts, aniseed and candied fruit.

Croccolato

Delicious cake made from almonds, hazelnuts, honey and a candied fruit, croccolato is covered with pure dark chocolate. Production is very limited.

Pecorino cheese matured in walnut leaves

The flat-surfaced forms are round, with a diameter of 12-16 centimeters, and have a slightly wrinkled, beige-colored rind. Inside a cheese is a granular straw color. Made with ewe’s milk from a Sardinian breed, one of traditional aspects of the maturing process is the use of earthenware jars and walnut leaves. This gives cheese its characteristic smell and slightly tannic taste.

Pecorino cheese from Pienza

This cheese is basically white in color with a slightly straw-colored tinge, and has a white rind with a violet hue. Very smooth in texture, it has a strong flavor with an after taste of tannins and grape skins that is the result of maturing in oak barriques. It is also made by milk from a Sardinian breed, and comes in similar sized forms.

Pici

Pici are a kind of rough, irregular-shaped spaghetti, and can be made by hand or machine. Pici are eaten as a first course with meat sauces, tomato and garlic sauce or with oil, garlic and chili. The traditional ingredients of handmade pici are soft durum flour, water, extra virgin olive oil and salt.

Saffron

Saffron from the province of Siena - the cultivation of Sienese saffron dates to 13th century. The flowers are picked between September and October. This is carried out strictly by hand in order to avoid damaging the delicate and precious red filaments. They are than dried out on a sieve placed next to an open fire, in the oven or the sun.

Tere di Siena

DOP extra virgin oil - this oil is made exclusively from healthy olives harvested by the end of December. They are stored in special rooms for no more than three days after harvesting and milled within 24 hours of being transferred to the olive mills. The oil is extracted using methods that do not alter the original properties of the olives. This olive is ideal for dressing salads, typical emmer and bean soups.