TanyaFolks don’t usually associate steak with Italian food until they get to Florence.
My restaurant order is usually fish, so I ordered fish during my first lunch in Florence. I sensed that the waiter didn’t appreciate my choice, but he got quite excited offering to order steak instead. I bet the waiter even quoted some Dante when he said “bistecca” (steak).
That time I stood with fish, but I acknowledged my “mistake” and insisted that the next day my husband, my son and I should eat the famous Bistecca alla Fiorentina – Florentine Steak.
The dish is so typical that if you ask for a fiorentina in a restaurant in Italy, without saying more, this is what you will be served.
In fact, one of the glories of Tuscan cuisine is a simply prepared Porterhouse steak (a T-bone steak cut from the rear end of the short loin) grilled rare over a wood fire. Its thickness is measured in “fingers” – a traditional measure of steak thickness in Tuscany – and it is ideally 3-4 “fingers” thick.
Walking around Florence you cannot miss the displays of the raw steaks in the windows of the restaurants and delis.
It could be a solo piece, as in the display above, or the whole inventory for the evening, as in the window of the Osteria Pepò on Via Rosina, near the Riccardi Medici Palace.
For our steak dinner we reserved a table at ‘4 Leoni’. The place is very popular among locals and is hidden from the mass tourism in a quiet square – Piazza della Passera in Oltrarno, not far from Ponte Vecchio and Palazzo Pitti.
There is nothing better than the outdoor dinner in the summer evening – if you are lucky to have your table ready on time. We were not, but to make us feel better, maitre’D offered us a complimentary bottle of chilled sparkling wine and, no sooner than we finished our bottle, we were invited in.
Our waiter recommended us to share – family style – an enormous 7 pound Porterhouse steak that he proudly presented to us before grilling.
The recipe seems to be very simple – steak, salt, pepper, olive oil and hot fire. The key point is the quality of meat. Steak Florentine is typically made with flavorful Chianina beef raised in Chianina Valley of Florence.
This kind of eating does not come cheap, especially when paired with good wine. You need a lot of wine for that size of steak, trust me.
A Fiorentina is never served well-done. Since it is thick, it forms a good crust on the outside while keeping the middle rare. That rare part of the steak was chopped into tartar right on our table, using a number of herbs and spices. We were able to recognize only a few of them – it was the quantity of wine to blame, I guess.
The joy of eating was as enormous as the steak!
There are some tips for grilling a good porterhouse steak at home. You won’t get Chianina beef and will probably use gas grill, but there are certain things that might be helpful.
If you buy a good quality steak at the supermarket, it will be somewhat wet. This steak should be air-dried in the fridge for a few hours on a rack. It should be removed from the fridge an hour before grilling.
The grill should be medium high – hot enough to form a crust.
The steak should be placed on a grill and grilled for 5 to 10 min on each side, placing the steak at 10 o’clock and 5 o’clock positions. Then it should be turned over and the process repeated. The grid print on the steak will look quite impressive.
Salt is sprinkled on the cooked side.
When it’s done, allow the steak to rest on the serving board for about 5 minutes, sprinkle freshly ground pepper and some virgin olive oil on top.
Salt, pepper and a few drops of olive oil. That’s it. Wedges of lemon and some green salad, probably. And a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Remember tonight… for it is the beginning of always”, Dante Alighieri
