Snippets from the Italian Scene
Addio Fiorentina!
Returning to matters at hand, March 31st will be a sad day for Tuscan meat-lovers: The Bistecca alla Fiorentina is being banned at least through December due to worries that the bone that's in contact with the spinal cord might harbor the prions that cause BSE/Mad Cow Disease if the animal is infected. No matter how one looks at it, the provision is not reassuring: We're told, on the one hand, that all animals slaughtered are being tested and that they're able to catch all cases of infection with the tests. On the other, just in case…. How effective are these tests? And the risk of getting the disease from contamination is unfortunately real: 5 cases of new variant KJ syndrome in an English town were traced to a butcher who didn't clean his knives after cutting into infected meat (a spinal cord, perhaps?).
What is a Bistecca alla Fiorentina, you wonder? It's a
porterhouse cut, in other words a thick T-bone steak, cut from a Vacca
Chianina, the large white cattle that are raised in southern Tuscany, in the
past to work in the fields, pull wagons, and such, and now to provide meat,
which is extraordinarily tasty and tender. Florentines consider it the ultimate
expression of Tuscan gastronomy, and it perhaps is today. However, the name
tells another story: It sounds like, and is, derived from the English word
beefsteak, and as a cut was introduced by the wealthy English people who
settled in Tuscany in the 1800s. Not to say that Tuscans didn't grill
beforehand, because they certainly did, but this particular cut was not
widespread. If anything, they used what is known as a costata, a term
that can mean many things, including a t-bone steak that's cut thinner than a
porterhouse, and can be just the contre-filet -- in other words, lack the
tender filet that is fundamental to the Fiorentina.
A recipe for Bistecca alla Fiorentina.
A presto,
Kyle Phillips
Webweaver, About Italian Cuisine
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