A month in Tuscany day 10 - the wood fired pizza oven

Day 10 the last full day with my family.  My husband drove me, Lois and my Father to a very small town called Monteriggioni, which is about 13 km North of Siena. This is a very small walled town or village really, you can walk across the whole town in about 5 minutes.

At the entrance there was square with a couple of restaurants with shady umbrellas, but we chose a restaurant to the right of the square that had a garden at the back.  This was very pleasant and the menu was full of Florentine specialities.  Dave ordered ribollita (Tuscan bread soup) this was delicious and more like a stew than a soup as it was so thick.

My Father ordered grilled porcini mushroom cap.

Porcini mushrooms are in season and there were several specials using them.  Lois ordered porcini mushroom salad which she was extremely pleased with.

I ordered the antipasta platter which consisted of tomato bread soup, white beans served in a filo pastry cup, sweet and sour onions and a bruschetta of lardo.

This was a very good lunch washed down with chianto classico.  We wandered around the town checking out the many little shops. It was a pretty little town and well worth the half hour drive.

We drove back the villa and spent the rest of the afternoon on the deck.  When the boys got back from Siena we fired up the wood fired pizza oven.

Whilst the oven was heating up Nicholas and I went for a walk along the road and took yet more pictures of the incredible scenery. When we returned, there was much discussion regarding how we were going to cook the pizza.  Mark was doing the heavy work with much advice from all.

Eventually we put the pizza on a large flat oven tray and slid it in.

It was extremely hot and took only minutes to cook.

Then Mark shovelled the hot coals from the pizza oven to the barbecue next to it, in order to barbecue some Tuscan sausage (yes we have had Tuscan sausage every day, it is that good) and pork chops

We ate by candlelight on the deck and it was just as I had imagined an evening in Tuscany should be.