Bistecca alla Fiorentina (Florentine Porterhouse over Wood Embers)

// SUPPLY LIST

// OPERATIONS

1. 1 Three hours before the steak is due to go on the fire, take the bistecca out of the fridge, unwrap it completely and stand it on a wire rack over a tray at cool room temperature, 18-20°C / 64-68°F, uncovered and out of any sun, until the surface dries to a tacky, matte sheen and the meat feels cool rather than cold to the back of your hand. Add nothing at this stage: no salt, no oil, no marinade, no garlic. A 6 cm steak taken straight from the fridge is the single most common way this dish fails, because the outside chars and greys long before the middle is even warm, and extra time on the fire only destroys the crust without fixing the centre.
2. 2 About an hour before you cook, lay crumpled newspaper and dry kindling on the floor of a kettle or masonry grill, build a fire of split oak, holm oak or olive wood over it and let it burn right down for 40-50 minutes, until every flame has gone and you have a bed of embers 8-10 cm deep, coated in fine grey ash and glowing orange underneath; rake them into an even bed the footprint of the steak plus a hand's width all round, which is about all 4 kg of logs will give you. Hardwood lump charcoal is an accepted shortcut in Florentine home kitchens and works honestly, but use around 1.5 kg of it rather than matching the weight of the wood, because charcoal is wood that has already burnt once and carries roughly twice the heat per kilo; gas is not a substitute, and petroleum briquettes taint the dripping fat. Set the grate 10 cm / 4 in above the bed: it is ready when you can hold your palm at grate height for only two seconds, roughly 300°C / 570°F at the bars. Never cook over live flame, which lays soot on the meat and burns the crust bitter before any heat reaches the centre.
3. 3 While the fire burns down, make the fagioli all'uccelletto: warm 2 tbsp of the olive oil with the crushed garlic and the sage in a small heavy saucepan or earthenware pot over low heat for 2-3 minutes, until the garlic is pale gold at the edges and smells sweet, and take it no further, because browned garlic turns the whole pot bitter and cannot be rescued. Add the passata and cook over medium-low heat for 5 minutes, until it darkens a shade and stops smelling raw, then fold in the drained cannellini with a pinch of the salt and simmer uncovered for 10-12 minutes, stirring rarely and gently so the beans stay whole, until the sauce clings to them rather than pooling around them. Set the pot aside covered and warm it through again while the steak rests.
4. 4 Ten minutes before grilling, pat both faces of the steak completely dry with kitchen paper, then trim a walnut-sized nub of hard fat from the outer rim, grip it in tongs and rub it over the hot bars until they gleam. Do not oil the meat itself: surface oil drips into the embers, flares up, and coats the steak in the acrid soot you spent an hour avoiding. Do not score the fat rim either, or it will leak into the fire.
5. 5 Lay the steak flat over the hottest part of the ember bed and leave it completely alone, with no pressing, no shuffling and no lifting, until the four-minute mark, then ease one corner up with tongs: it should release cleanly from the bars and show a near-black lattice where the metal sat, with deep chestnut brown between the marks. If it grips the bars the crust has not set, so put it straight back down and give it the last minute, five in total. If dripping fat sets off a flare-up, slide the steak to a cooler corner of the grate for a few seconds rather than splashing water on the embers, which throws ash all over the meat.
6. 6 Turn the steak once and once only, using tongs on the bone or the fat rim and never a carving fork, which punctures the crust you have just built and lets the steak bleed into the fire, then grill the second face for 5 minutes over the same heat, again without moving it, pressing it or basting it, until it matches the first for colour.
7. 7 Now stand the steak upright on its bone, propped against the back wall of the grill or wedged between two balls of foil, and leave it there for 6-8 minutes, until the fat rim has crisped and tightened and the bone is too hot to touch. This is the step that makes a Fiorentina work: the bone conducts heat up into the eye of the fillet and the thick centre climbs to temperature while neither face takes on any more colour. Skip it and you get a steak that is black on the outside and cold in the middle, which is the classic failure of a home cook copying a restaurant photo.
8. 8 Slide an instant-read thermometer horizontally into the thickest part of the strip loin, well clear of the bone, and take the steak off the fire at 48°C / 118°F. Rare, al sangue, is not a preference here but the dish itself: this beef is very lean, and past 55°C / 131°F the muscle tightens, there is not enough intramuscular fat to save it, and you have spent serious money on something dry and grey. If it reads only 42°C / 108°F, stand it back on the bone for a further 4-5 minutes and check again rather than returning a face to the embers; a thicker steak or a colder kitchen simply wants longer upright, and the thermometer decides this, not the clock.
9. 9 Move it to a warm plate or board, stand it on the bone or tilt it so the cut faces are not sitting in liquid, and only now salt it: crush the coarse sea salt lightly between your fingers over both faces and the fat rim, about 10 g in all, and add the cracked black pepper if you want it, though plenty of Florentines use salt alone. Salting an hour ahead would have drawn moisture to the surface and steamed the crust into a grey skin, whereas salt applied now dissolves in the hot surface fat and stays where you put it, and whatever falls onto the board stays on the board. Some Florentine cooks salt the cooked face at the moment they turn the steak, which is equally orthodox; salting the raw steak in advance is not.
10. 10 Rest the steak 8-10 minutes somewhere warm and uncovered, and resist the urge to tent it with foil, which traps steam and softens the crust you built. The centre will carry over to 52-54°C / 126-129°F while it sits and the juices will settle back into the muscle; carve it straight off the fire and you will lose a plateful of them onto the board.
11. 11 Carve on a grooved board: run a sharp knife tight down each side of the T to free the strip loin and the fillet whole, then slice each across the grain into pieces 1.5 cm / 1/2 in thick and rebuild them around the bone so it reaches the table looking like a steak. Drizzle the remaining 2 tbsp of Tuscan extra virgin olive oil over the cut surfaces now, raw and after cooking, never before, and tip any juices from the board over with it.
12. 12 Serve at once on warm plates with the reheated fagioli all'uccelletto, a handful of rocket that will wilt slightly in the meat juices, and the lemon wedges alongside for whoever wants them, since Florentines will argue about lemon all night and the diplomatic answer is to put them out and say nothing. Drink Chianti Classico or a young Morellino di Scansano, and let the bone go to whoever claims it first, because gnawing it at the table is not a joke, it is the custom.

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