pinzimonio

To prepare this dish you need as many small bowls (ideally 10 cm in diameter and 10 cm tall) as your guests and a large basket of fresh vegetables.

This can include:

Fennels - Wash in plenty of water and remove the hard outer leaves. Cut in quarters.

Spring onions - wash in plenty of water and remove the hard outer layers.

Celery - Use only the heart and wash in plenty of water

Artichokes - Only the Tuscan variety, skinny, purple in color. Simply wash in plenty of water and then I will explain how to eat them!

Horse radishes – Washed and peeled.

Other vegetables you can use but are not traditional : indive , carrots.

Each person is assigned a small bowl with some olive oil (extra virgin, etc... as usual), salt and pepper and you leave the vegetables in the middle of the table.

The meal consists on picking the vegetables, dipping in the sauce and eating the tip. After doing so you dip again and eat, etc.

An international kitchen cookbook would call this crudite, but in Tuscany we call it pinzimonio. This is really a strange word, and I guess that only a few people know its meaning outside Tuscany.I made a brief research on its etimology and the word comes from "pizzo", tip.

Probably due to the fact that you only eat the tip...

So let's come to the artichokes, this odd vegetable that resembles a flower. You remove the outer leaves, the ones that are all of dark colour. Then you will see that the leaves will start to have a whitish (pale green) bottom. That part is soft and edible. Dip it in the sauce and eat.

The pale green part will become bigger and bigger as you go inside the artichoke. At a certain point you will see that the leaves are all pale green and soft. You reached the heart of the artichoke.

At this point cut the top bit (1-2 cm) of the artichoke to remove the spines, reduce the stem to 3-4 cm length and peel of the outer layer of the stem. Cut in quarters, remove the hairy bit in the middle (if it is a good artichoke no hairs will be inside) and eat it.

Don't be afraid, it is more complicated to say than to do. Try and enjoy your first carciofo in pinzimonio.
Don’t try to prepare the artichoke in advance as it will get dark very soon.

You can eat some Tuscan bread with the vegetables.

The key of success of this dish is the quality of the oil and the quality of the vegetables. It is usually eaten as a second course. Spring onions can be a challenging experience…