BISTECCA alla FIORENTINA
(steak in the Fiorentine manner)

Ingredients:
Fillet of beef, cut to a thickness of three fingers Salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil

Take the steaks out of the fridge at least three hours before they are cooked (the meat will be cooked rare and would otherwise stay cold in the middle; it is suggested that at the same time you open a bottle of good Chianti that has been aged for at least three years). Place a large amount of charcoal under the grill (it should be glowing but with of four fingers above the coals).

Place the steaks on the grill. Let them cook on one side, without adding salt and under no circumstances prodding them with the fork. When they have formed a crust (seven-eight minutes), turn them over with a spatula, sprinkle the cooked side with salt and grill them on the other side for another seven or eight minutes. Turn them over again and salt the other side. At the end they should still be rare in the middle and well-cooked on the outside. Before serving, season each steak with a little fresh-ground black pepper and couple of drops of raw oil.
This and only this is the real fiorentina, i.e.a T-bone cut of sirloin steak, no lemon, never well-done and only grilled over charcoal.

One day the man who taught me to cook was unable to resist handing on t me his own way of grilling the fiorentina, and I still do it like that occasionally:take some dry hay and put the steaks in it for five or six hours, so that the meat absorbs the most intense of the flavours on which the animals feeds. When the steaks are cooked I burn the same hay next to them. It’s a rather sacrilegious thing to do, but a little bit of blasphemy every now and then is certainly not going to get us sent to Hello.
Giancarlo Giannelli