Beefsteak, Florentine Style

History

Bistecca alla fiorentina is a thick T-bone loin steak — fillet on one side of the bone, sirloin on the other — grilled rare, today from a young steer or heifer of the Chianina breed. Chianina cattle have been raised in Tuscany's Val di Chiana since Roman times, long as working oxen before their shift to beef. Artusi describes essentially the modern dish: a bone-in chop a finger or so thick from the loin, laid over blazing coals, turned often, salted and peppered only once cooked and finished with a little butter, never overdone so it bleeds juice into the plate. He states plainly that the name derives from the English beef-steak, meaning an ox rib; food writers likewise trace bistecca to English beefsteak, dating the loanword to the early nineteenth century. A popular legend instead sets the coinage at a Medici-era San Lorenzo feast around 1565, when English visitors are said to have cried "beef-steak" over oxen roasted in the piazza — a story commonly told but not documented. Florence did roast whole oxen for the August 10 San Lorenzo feast, and by the late nineteenth century the grilled steak had settled into restaurant custom. Artusi notes the dish had not yet spread through Italy, where some provinces slaughtered old working animals and misapplied the name to a grilled fillet round.

Ingredients

• beef loin chop, bone-in (braciuola with its bone)
• salt
• pepper
• small piece butter

Instructions

1. Take a bone-in loin chop of young beef, a finger to a finger-and-a-half thick, unseasoned (at most washed and dried).
2. Grill over a hot charcoal fire, turning several times; do not overcook, so it releases abundant juice when cut.
3. Season with salt and pepper only after cooking (salting or oiling beforehand ruins it).
4. Serve with a small piece of butter on top.