Stuffed neck of Locio, or Collo di Locio Ripieno: ...Donatella Cinelli Colombini owes her belief in the importance of wine travel to when she was a teenager, and would greet customers who came to the family estate on weekends, when nobody else was around. In addition to making wine and promoting wine tourism, she's an accomplished cook whose recipes have appeared in a number of cookbooks, including Aldo Santini's La Cucina Maremmana.
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 90 minutes
Ingredients:
- The neck of a locio or two chicken necks
- A medium-sized bunch of parsley
- A clove of garlic
- A chicken liver
- A handful of midolla di pane (bread, crust removed -- you'll nead bread that has firm crumb here,
- for example Tuscan bread)
- 1/2 cup broth
- An egg
- 2 tablespoons grated, well seasoned Tuscan pecorino
- Salt & pepper
- A carrot
- A stick celery
- Half an onion
- A clove
Preparation:
Donatella has published a delightful little book called Ricettario di Monte Oliveto e Trequanda (her estate) nelle Crete Senesi (Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, Via Giambologna 5, 50132 Firenze). It's one of those books that's great fun to read for the recipe backgrounds too.For example, Collo di "Locio" Ripieno, Stuffed neck of "Locio."
"Loci," she writes, "are big white geese with very long necks. They used to be the terror of small children because they'd nip at their legs with their serrated beaks. Come threshing time they'd meet their demise. The Crete Senesi [the clayey badlands south of Siena] were and are the land of grain, where the threshing was a collective ritual in which everyone participated, following the threshing machine from farm to farm. Lunch and dinner were lavish affairs and the poor loci inevitably ended up in the pot.
"Today, the recipe is done with the necks of regular geese and chickens."
Assemble the ingredients listed above. Begin by flaming the locio neck to remove pinfeathers, and then wash it and bone it. Tie it off at the top, where the head was.
Mince the parsley, garlic, and chicken liver and put them in a bowl. Dip the bread in the broth, squeeze out the excess liquid, and add it to the bowl, together with the egg, and cheese. Season the stuffing to taste with salt and pepper, mix it well, and use it to stuff the neck, being carful not to tamp the filling down too hard lest the skin split as the neck cooks.
Tie it shut. Prepare the cooking broth by filling a pot with water and adding the vegetables, sticking the clove into the onion. Bring the pot to a boil, add the neck, and simmer it gently for about 40 minutes. It will be done when the juices run clear if you prick it with a skewer.
Remove the neck, let it cool, and cut it into rounds. Serve it with boiled baby potatoes seasoned with salsa verde (to make it mince parsley, capers, anchovies, and hard boiled eggs, then mix the mixture with olive oil and vinegar to taste to make the sauce).
The broth will work nicely as soup.
The wine? Chianti.
