Panzanella - Italian bread salad

Do you know what cucina povera means? It is an Italian term for the poor man's food. 
But nothing offensive. Peasant cooking means take the best from the ingredients you have on hand. Fresh ripe vegetables. Cheap cuts of meat and offals. Stale bread. The meaning is  cheap ingredients or ingredients you anyway have at home, simple recipe, rich taste.
In fact, bread and olive oil are two of the fundamental ingredients of Tuscan cookery and stale bread should not be wasted. So, Panzanella is a way to use a day-old bread. Roast or pan-fry the bread. Chop some ripe, but firm tomatoes. Add dressing and some more ingredients and you've got the summer taste in your plate, even if it is late spring outside. Bread soaks up all the juices from the vegetables and dressing and melts in mouth. Most of the recipes call for fresh basil as an ingredient, but I prefer to skip it in my version. I also substitute hot green peppers for the sweet ones used in the original. 

Trippa alla Fiorentina (Florence-style tripe)

Can you put in one sentence sophisticated words like Renaissance, paintings and architecture and a humble ingredient like tripe? Yes, if you describe the landmarks of Florence. There are lots of stalls and stands around this city, where tripe is prepared accordoing to various recipes and you will miss part of the Florence experience if you don't taste it.
Trippa alla Fiorentina is a specialty of preparing tripe with vegetables and tomato sauce. As most of the Tuscan dishes, it is simple and tasty, nutritios and unexpensive and could be easily prepared at home. Little pretence, deep and satisfying taste.

Patiency is the key word when talking about tripe - the more you cook it on medium heat, the more tenderness you will get at the final dish. The spongy honeycomb part of the tripe is the most tender and so my favourite. It is a good idea to buy a pre-cooked tripe,  this will save you 3 hours of preliminary boiling.