Tuscany
Preparation - Easy
Serves 4 - 6

When Orlando bags a boar, Silvana cooks it in quite a different way. She will take some pieces from the loin of a young animal; the meat is pale and coarse-grained, looking more like vitello than domestic pork. She washes it carefully, not bothering to dry it very thoroughly, then she cuts it up into chunks and puts it into a pan in which some chopped garlic and some sage leaves have been stewing in olive oil. After she has turned the meat over to seal it on all sides she adds a large glass of white wine and leaves the meat to simmer slowly, adding more wine if there is a danger of the meat drying out.

When it is done the flesh is tender and has a more subtle flavour than ordinary pork. Maybe Silvana can successfully cook the cinghiale in this simple manner without the long complicated preparations and highly seasoned ingredients that are suggested in cookery books because she knows the state of the animal when it is brought home. She is not buying a piece of meat on a butcher's slab whose age she has no accurate way of telling. Perhaps it has always been felt that a strong selvatic animal like a boar deserves a rich, time-consuming treatment. However Silvana prepares this meat with excellent results and the minimum of fuss. And there again is an example of her particular style of Tuscan cooking.