Bones_ Recipes, History, and Lore - Jennifer McLagan [11]
A specialty of Tuscany, where the local Chianina beef is known for its succulence, beefsteak fiorentina is simply a thickly cut porterhouse steak grilled over hot coals and bathed in the best-quality extra virgin olive oil fragrant with herbs. My husband and I ate our first one more than fifteen years ago in a nondescript restaurant in a little town outside of Florence. The town had a bakery, a butcher, and a café/bar with a small dining room. The menu was short, and there was no wine list; you chose your wine from a selection displayed on the shelf behind the bar. Neither of us knew much about Italian wine at the time, so I made my husband choose. Being an artist, he picked the one with the label he liked best—Tignanello. Now I always let him choose the wine.
1 porterhouse steak, 2 inches (5 cm) thick, about 3½ pounds (1.57 kg)
½ cup (125 ml) extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon rosemary leaves
1 tablespoon marjoram leaves
10 sage leaves
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1.One hour before cooking, remove the steak from the refrigerator.
2.Heat the oil in a small saucepan until hot. Remove from the heat, add the rosemary, marjoram, sage, and garlic, and stir to mix. The moisture in the herbs will cause the oil to sizzle. Set aside to cool.
3.Preheat a grill or broiler to high. Grill or broil the steak to rare or medium-rare (see page 25), turning once. Place it a shallow dish, pour over the herb-infused oil, and turn to coat. Let the steak rest in the oil bath for 5 to 7 minutes.
4.Remove the steak from the oil and cut the meat off the bone in two pieces. Cut into thick slices, then drizzle with the flavored oil, making sure each person gets some meat from both sections of the steak.
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Carving Porterhouse Steak
This steak is removed from the center bone in two sections, then carved into slices or thick pieces. Place the steak on the carving board and cut along either side of the T-bone to remove the meat. Slice the tenderloin and the loin, and make sure each person receives meat from both sections.
Grilling Bone-in Steaks
Two things contribute to the success of grilling bone-in steaks. First is the thickness of the steak. T-bone steaks should be at least 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick, and porterhouse and bone-in rib steaks are best if they are at least 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.5 cm) thick. This allows you to test the internal temperature with an instant-read thermometer. The second thing is the temperature of the grill. Make sure the grill is very hot, and sear the steak for 1 minute on each side. Then lower the heat or move the grill rack farther away from the heat and continue cooking the steak. For medium-rare steak, cook T-bone steaks for a total of 7 to 10 minutes longer and porterhouse and bone-in rib steaks for 10 to 14 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the meat away from the bone registers 125° to 130°F (51° to 54°C).
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Millennium Rib Roast
My New Year’s Eve dinner for the millennium was a long time in the planning. We had just finished the renovations on our apartment in Paris and guests would be coming from as far away as Australia. The menu was hotly debated for weeks. Finally I settled on a standing rib roast of beef for the main course. Impressive, simple to carve, and delicious hot, warm, or even at room temperature, depending how the dinner progressed and how much the cook celebrated. I left Canada on Christmas Day, armed with a terrine of Canadian foie gras, to show the French that we could do it as well as them, and a vacuum-sealed rib roast. (Although the meat in France is excellent, I was worried that during the holiday season, our Paris butcher might be closed or not have the size of roast I needed.)
Knowing that I had dinner with me, I relaxed as we took off. The next morning, the pilot woke the passengers with an announcement that we would be arriving an hour early, thanks to extremely strong tailwinds; all was going well. Five minutes later, he informed us that the Paris airports were closed and the plane was detoured to Heathrow. It was