This delicious pork roast makes a wonderful Sunday dinner or company meal. Serve it with potatoes roasted in the oven with herbs and a green salad or vegetable. And if you are in Tuscany, please ask the butcher for a Cinta Senese cut of pork.

• 1 small head of garlic, in cloves
• 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary
• 1 tablespoon chopped thyme
• Tuscan Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 4 pound boneless loin of pork
• Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 2 cups dry white wine

Chop or process the garlic, herbs and about a tablespoon of the olive oil until they are a paste. Spread the paste all over the roast, including in any cavities or openings. Salt and pepper the roast well and refrigerate, in order for the flavors to meld, for at least an hour, or preferably overnight.

Brown lightly on the stove top, then roast at 400 degrees, pouring in half the wine and broth to begin with, and adding more every 15 to 20 minutes. The roast should take about one hour, or until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees, for slightly pink.

After removing the roast to a platter, tent it with foil for 10 minutes, and reduce the pan juices for serving with the meat. Delicious!

The Pig With The White Belt

The fat and sassy breed of pig known at the Cinta Senese is an Italian masterpiece, and only in Tuscany has it received just recognition: a certification of purity which, in 2000, was awarded to just 497 animals living on 100 farms in our region.

According to the regional program, Communication and Food Education, "The Cinta Senese is the founding father of all the pigs in Tuscany, a progenitor, the only surviving species from an ancient, tenacious agriculture, a wild, free animal that must never be enclosed in a stall."

The history of the breed is indeed ancient. These pigs are a race native to the area of Tuscany that includes Monteriggioni, Sovicille, Gaiole, Castenuovo Berardenga and Casole d'Elsa. This breed is known to have existed long before the white porcine races of northern Europe. We know for a certainty that the Cinta Senese was flourishing in the area in 1338, for a farmer is depicted leading one of them to market in Lorenzetti's famous fresco, The Effects of Good and Bad Government, to be seen in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico.

But the Cinta Senese were around long before then. There is evidence that the Etruscans and Romans both depended on the Cinta Senese. The Romans, in fact, took the pigs with them on their far flung campaigns, and the descendants of the Roman stock can be found all over Europe today.

We mentioned earlier that the Cinta Senese were a rough breed that do not flourish in close quarters. For this reason, as well as others, medieval peasantry were able to depend on the Cinta Senese as a food source; the pigs roamed wild and free, and adapted to all weather. Rural families, isolated for large parts of the year, found the Cinta Senese to be an invaluable and easily sustainable breed.

Carlo Cattaneo, Italy's most important Cinta breeder, has said, "I am convinced that the meat and fat of these animals have significantly contributed to improving the living conditions of the people of central Italy." Until around 1950, it was nearly impossible to find a farm family in the environs of Siena or in Chianti that did not keep one or two Cinta Senese to provide a store of lard and salami.

The breeds name comes from the Cinta, or wide belt, which is a white band around the pig's withers, chest, shoulders and front legs. This band can be seen in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco, mentioned above, but breed standards to day are more specific that those of 1338, and Lornezetti's poor farmer's pig would not pass muster.

The rest of the coat of the Cinta Senese is covered in dark short bristles. Their muzzle is sharply pointed, and their sloping back seems to streak upward directly from this point. The tail doesn't curl like that of domestic pigs, but instead ends in a plume of bristles. The bones are strong and robust, and, most interestingly, support flesh that is almost double that of ordinary domestic pigs.

The Cinta Senese pigs love freedom. They root wild in the woods, plunging among brush for acorns, tubers, roots, truffles, chestnuts, and fallen leaves. Thus their sustainability in the hardest of historic times.

This, sadly, was not a breed for modern times. The pigs cannot live in confinement, and they reach butchering age much slower than other domesticated animals. With the modern age's need for speed and economy, and the taste for leaner meat, the Cinta Senese soon fell out of favor, and the breed began to disappear. The Cinta Senese faced extinction.

A few romantic breeders, in the dense forests near Medieval villages, hung onto a scant number of the Cinta Senese. But the breed was rapidly deteriorating due to inbreeding. There were not enough Cinta Senese pigs left for the breed to thrive.

But loving their land and traditional products, some Tuscan breeders set out to save the Cinta Senese. The formed the Compagnia della Cinta, with the declared objective of protecting the most genuine characteristics of the breed. It proved to be a lucrative choice. Today, a salami of Cinta, with its unique and intense flavor, costs five or six times that made from the meat of other breeds.

Since the meat of the Cinta is so distinctive, it is advised that those new to the taste begin their gourmet adventure with caution, trying first some of the more delicate products, such as the filet, capocollo, or prosciutto. The lard, bacon, salami and finocchiona of the Cinta are more heartily flavored, and perhaps should be tried after an initiation to the daintier products.

SALUMI

• Prosciutto di Cinta Senese
  
  
• Capocollo di Cinta Senese
  
  
• Salame di Cinta Senese
  
  
• Finocchiona di Cinta Senese
  
  
• Arista di Cinta Senese
  
  
• Lardo stagionato di Cinta Senese
  
  
• Guanciale di Cinta Senese
  
  
• Pancetta arrotolata di Cinta Senese
  
  
• Salsicce di Cinta Senese

In terms of fresh meat, just about any cut, from a filet to the liver, that one can purchase from other types of pigs, is available from the Cinta Senese. Again, some of these may not be as delicately flavored as one is used to in pork, but they are delicious, moist, and a bit fatty. We hope you have the chance to try them.

As mentioned above, the most famous depiction of the Cinta Senese appears in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco, The Effects of Good and Bad Government, executed in 1338, and to be seen in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena.

Lorenzetti lived from 1290 to 1348, spending all his life in Siena, the city of his birth. He and his elder brother, Pietro Lorenzetti, trained under Simone di Martino, did most of their work between 1317 and 1348. Pietro was largely faithful to the style of di Martino, but was also greatly influenced by Giotto. The influence of Martino and Giotto is to be seen in the works of both brothers.

Ambrogio is considered the more talented of the brothers, but like Pietro, his work suffered from his tastes. Ambrogio had quite a liking for the allegorical, which is evident in his work. His frescoes in the Salla della Pace in Siena are considered to be his masterwork, but their allegorical and didactic nature has, in the opinions of some critics, detracted from their power.

The Salla della Pace is also known as the Hall of the Nine, nine referring to the leadership of guild and monetary powers that governed the Republic of Siena. Three of the walls of the Salla were frescoed by Lornezetti with allegorical figures representing Good Government. In two more facings, he painted panoramic scenes of the Effects of Good Government on Town and Country, and in others, the Allegory of Bad Government, and its Effects on Town and Country.

Lorenzetti is also well known for his works in the Chiesa di San Francesco in Siena, which include depictions of St Louis of Toulouse and the Franciscan Martyrdom at Bombay. And, as well as his portrait of the Cinta Senese, we also find the first evidence of the existence of the hourglass in another of Lorenzetti's works. Lorenzetti is thought to have perished in the bubonic plague of 1348/49.