Piedmontese tomini with green sauce…an inviting appetizer to say the least!

The recipes of Piedmontese tomini are typical of the tradition of the Northern Italian region. Discover all the secrets of this dish now.

Piedmontese tomini are an appetizer of the Piedmontese culinary tradition , in local restaurants they are often served with mixed cold cuts and other typical appetizers. In this case you don't have to worry about answering the question "how to cook Piedmontese tomini?" because the basic product of the recipe is a fresh cheese which is available on the market in practical blocks that can be cut into slices and does not require cooking. It can be more or less seasoned and obviously this will affect the final flavor of the dish.

To season the tomini you can prepare the green sauce with parsley , used according to tradition also to accompany boiled meat, but it often happens to also find fresh tomini in red sauce, the other typical condiment which instead has the tomato as its basic ingredient .

How to prepare the recipe for green Piedmontese tomini

1. Take the parsley, rinse it well under running water, then dry it and keep it aside. Peel the garlic cloves and then drain the anchovies from the preservation oil.
2. Soak the breadcrumbs with the vinegar, meanwhile chop the parsley with the garlic, anchovies and desalted capers. Continue until you have obtained a fine mixture .
3. Transfer everything into a large bowl, add the bread soaked in vinegar and squeezed well. At this point add as much olive oil as needed to have a smooth sauce .
4. Add salt if necessary, then deal with the cheese.
5. Cut the dough (in Piedmont Sancarlin or a similar cheese is usually used) into slices no less than 1 cm thick and place the cut cheese on a serving plate (sometimes this cheese is so soft, almost like a cream, that you will have to give the shape yourself using a spoon and a pastry cutter).
6. Spread the green sauce on the surface of the cheese, decorate as desired with spicy chili pepper or other ingredients and serve immediately or after a few hours of rest in the refrigerator.

Tomini can also be accompanied with bagnet ross , the tomato-based Piedmontese sauce par excellence.

Here is a short video that illustrates all the steps to prepare this delicious Piedmontese appetizer.

Conservation

We advise you to consume the Piedmontese tomini al verde within a couple of days of preparation.

Origin and history of green tomini

It seems incredible and yet behind this simple dish lies an ancient history . Two words must certainly be said for cheese . It is a fatty or semi-fatty cheese, cylindrical in shape, sour in taste and white in colour. In fact, the tomini used in the recipe are not those that are usually cooked on the grill. These are fresh or seasoned tomini for a maximum of one month which were originally prepared by housewives.

Fresh , i.e. consumed a couple of days after production, it is bright white; after a few days it begins to firm up while after a month (maximum maturation time) it becomes straw-coloured with a light crust.

The Tomini al verde were the protagonists of the snacks sénoire , the Piedmontese snack on Sunday afternoon. The green bath (the same that accompanies the mixed boiled meat ) was prepared differently depending on the social class: the sharecropper's green sauce was with parsley, garlic, oil, chilli pepper, bread and anchovies; the landowner's green sauce on the other hand was less spicy and without garlic but richer thanks to the addition of capers, pickles, hard-boiled egg, herbs and sometimes tomato paste.

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How to make green sauce: the recipe from Piedmontese cuisine