As cultural tourists, who among us isn’t dazzled by the Tuscan sun? We see ourselves feasting beneath its rays: Platters laden with antipasti, pasta, bistecca all fiorentina, Sangiovese wine, and sweets . . . la dolce vita.

But Tuscans in their 70s, 80s, and 90s tell a story of a different table.

These old kitchen hands are the witnesses who inform Pamela Sheldon Johns’ latest cookbook Cucina Povera: Tuscan Peasant Cooking (Andrews McMeel). Johns, an American cookbook author who owns Poggio Etrusco, an organic agritourismo near Montepulciano, has written a cultural and culinary history of a by-gone world. [Read more…]