Friday,
September 22,
Cecchini:
The
ANNOTICO Report
"Solo
ciccio!" of course means
"Only meat!"!!!!! in a
Restaurant that has RULES, of which that is the first!!!!!
It
is actually an extension of his Butcher shop, and is unusual in that it serves
only a very TRADITIONAL menu
There
are four dining rooms, each contains a single COMMUNAL table that seats 10 to
14; they're left bare, the tableware is simple/ rustic.
You
eat FIVE courses of meat, with no choices, but with two vegetables and
bread, all for 30 euros [about $39],
There
are just two seatings, at 7 and 9 p.m. Strictly enforced.
"Not
only can you bring wine, you must bring wine!"A
place where you bring your own bottle? No corkage fee? Unheard
of in
Though
the food is extraordinary and undeniably soulful, this evening is about much
more than that. The very act of serving dishes family style and passing the
plates around the table has worn away any awkwardness among strangers. For this
night, for this moment, we're all friends. We're all family.
We
spent an evening sitting down with 10 strangers and all is right with the
world. We've dared to put ourselves in the hands of a butcher, and come away
humbled.
By
S. Irene Virbila, Times Staff Writer
September 20, 2006
"HAVE you seen the rules?" the most
famous butcher in
We're in Antica Macelleria Cecchini, his centuries-old marble butcher shop in Panzano, a village in the heart of the Chianti Classico wine region. Dario Cecchini
reaches for a piece of paper on a shelf behind the counter.
"Here,"
he says, not giving me time to read the sheet before he begins to recite the
rules in the same stentorian voice he uses to declaim Dante, which he is wont
to do in the shop, on the street, anywhere at all.
"Solo ciccio!" he tells me. "Only meat!" That's not only rule No. 1 for the
restaurant Cecchini opened two months ago just across
the street (Via Chiantigiana, the main drag that runs
through Chianti); Solociccio is also the name of the
restaurant. "Non e ristorante!"
Cecchini almost shouts. OK, what is it then?
Solociccio is an extension of the butcher shop, he
explains, where you will eat as if you were at the house of a butcher. "We
cook the recipes of my family, a butcher's family. You will eat very
traditional things, things you can't find anywhere else in
"I am a butcher for 35 years, the last of an old butcher family that goes
back 250 years in Panzano. And when people taste one
of my family's dishes, they taste my soul, the soul of an artigiano
[craftsman]."
Whatever the place is, I'm more than ready. My husband and I have driven more
than five hours to get to this meal.
Back to the rules, which are also posted on the door of Solociccio. You eat five
courses of meat, with no choices, but with two vegetables and bread. You eat at
a communal table.
There are just two seatings, at 7 and 9 p.m. And as
the rules put it so nicely, "All of the above is to be had for 30 euros
[about $39], and nearly 2 hours at our table, at the end of which you will turn
your chair to the next guests."
But Solociccio's most interesting rule is listed
almost as an afterthought. In fact, it is: Cecchini
didn't come up with it until three weeks in, but it was already
! a subject of discussion among the 70
winemakers in Panzano.
I heard it from Giovanni Manetti of the famous Fontodi estate just down the road. "Not only can you
bring wine, you must bring wine!"
A place where you bring your own bottle? And there's no corkage fee? Unheard of in
Meanwhile, Cecchini, who was profiled in
Cecchini explains, aided by pantomime, that he works
it on a marble table, then beats it by hand with
rosemary, garlic, sea salt, lots of black pepper and a dash of vinegar.
I love it, but what's it doing to my arteries? Cecchini,
however, may be the greatest argument for carnivorism:
He's a vital, impressive specimen of Tuscan manhood who looks far younge! r than his 51 years. And
his cholesterol, he volunteers, is perfect perfetto!
He leaps behind the counter to cut some chops for a customer, using a
medieval-looking cleaver to whack through the bone in a quick, percussive
rhythm.
By early evening, my husband and I are hanging out with the rest of Panzano in the miniscule town square having an aperitif at
one of the tables belonging to Enoteca Baldi, one of the two excellent wine shops in the village,
and taking in the scene.
A silver Maserati filled with fancy Florentines
glides by, followed by a tiny, three-wheeled truck with a huge black dog in the
back that barks at everything in sight. Senior citizens gossip on one bench,
their heads leaning together the better to hear. Teenagers with spiky hair and
distressed jeans check out the girls at another. From my seat, I can see both
the butcher shop and the entrance to Solociccio
across the street. As 7 approaches, Cecchini is out
front chatting up s! ome
newcomers.
Just before 9, we head over. From the street, you can see into one of the
dining rooms: People are passing platters, eating, laughing, drinking
wine, the very picture of conviviality.
The kitchen's huge glass window offers a view too, and in front, two elderly
ladies have brought out chairs and are sitting watching the cook and her
helpers. In a small village like Panzano, this is
better than TV.
At long last we enter and take our assigned place at the end of a massive,
2-inch-thick handmade oak table filled with Italians and some British and New
Zealanders, all of whom live in
At the top of the night's menu is written: "Leave behind every hope, oh
you who enter: You are in the hands of a butcher." We surely are.
We are also inside a butcher's dream. It took Italian artisans four years to
renovate and construct Solociccio's dramatic
contemporary space, three floors linked by hand-set stone walls and a glass
staircase.
The four dining rooms each contains a single table that seats 10 to 14;
they're left bare, and the tableware is simple and rustic.
Let the wine flow
EVERYONE'S pouring their own wine we've brought bottles of Flaccianello from Fontodi and the
single-vineyard Rancia Chianti from Felsina; others are pouring Salvioni
Brunello di Montalcino, Castello di Ama Chianti, all Tuscan. The talk moves back and forth between Italian
and English, haltingly at first, then as everyone becomes comfortable, it
doesn't seem to matter what language you speak. Everything has a warm glow and
we feel like we've been lucky to have been invited to a swell party.
The trio of antipasti begins with delicious, tender cubes of head cheese with
chickpeas and slivered red onions. Then a platter of crostini
inzuppate slices of bread soaked in the fiery sugo or meat sauce Cecchino
calls fiammi d'inverno
(flames of winter). And finally, balls of raw beef! marinated
in lemon, olive oil and garlic, barely seared on one side and stuck with a
branch of rosemary. It's the same meat Cecchino sells
in the butcher shop as "Tuscan sushi," and it's absolutely dreamy.
The next thing I know I'm eating something called tenerumi.
It's wonderful: little bits of meat and tendon with a great variety of texture,
topped with a piquant salsa verde. Tenerumi turns out to be the cow's knee, a
cut that wouldn't exactly fly out the shop door, so traditionally the butcher's
family has eaten it.
Everyone eats everything at our table, no hesitations, no
dietary scruples. We understand that by using every part of the beef, Cecchini along
with all the members of his profession gives respect to the animal that has
given its life so we can eat.
At the butcher shop, there's so much demand for true Chianina
beef, the Tuscan breed that has almost disappeared from this valley as vines
have supplanted other crops, th!
at Cecchini has a long
waiting list for it.
Meanwhile, who anymore has the time to braise the cuts that take four or even
eight hours to transform into something sublime? The butcher does.
Cecchini's stracotto
is one of those cuts. The recipe, he tells me, commemorates La Lidia, an old woman
from the village. She didn't leave a painting or a building behind, he says,
but she did leave this recipe.
It's a massive piece of beef that looks like a section of a tree trunk lying in
the pan, shaggy with onions that get darker and darker as it cooks, until the
sauce is mahogany in color. As served here tonight, it is something monumental.
Everything goes into the sauce, which seems to hold the very soul of the beef.
For brasato al midollo,
Cecchini bones a beef shank, removing the marrow,
which he lays in the shank's cavity, then rolls it back up again with sea salt,
pepper and rosemary. A couple of pounds of peeled whole shallots then go into! the pot and it's braised, slowly, until the shallots are
completely soft and the beef marrow melts away, lending all its richness to the
sauce.
Toward the end, some vin
santo, the amber holy wine made from dried white
grapes, is poured over. Stupendous. When my husband
can't contain himself any longer and tells Cecchini
the brasato is insanely good, the butcher
leans down, and with his huge hands, grabs my husband's head like a pumpkin and
kisses the top of it.
The two vegetables are roasted sweet red peppers with a tremendous depth of
flavor, and boiled cannellini beans with some peppery
Tuscan olive oil to drizzle over, simple as could be, but great.
In good company
THOUGH the food is extraordinary and undeniably soulful, this evening is
about much more than that. The very act of serving dishes family style and
passing the plates around the table has worn away any awkwardness among
strangers. For this night, for this moment, ! we're all friends. We're all family. Cecchini
moves from room to room, beaming like a proud papa.
Soon there's espresso not from a
fancy machine, but made in the familiar stovetop espresso pot used in every
traditional home. And then Cascierri offers squares
of moist olive oil cake topped with sugar and pine nuts.
And lastly, a parade of digestivi just added to the menu last week when a guest brought
some for Cecchino to try: bitter chino
(quinine), anise that's fortissimo. I don't make it to the grappa, but
others do.
Well past 11, we get up from the table, reluctantly, and say goodnight and
goodbye to our newfound friends. It's been an extraordinary couple of hours. Cecchino's right this isn't a restaurant; it's much more.
We spent an evening sitting down with 10 strangers and all is right with the
world. We've dared to put ourselves in the hands of a butcher, and come away
humbled.
Solociccio, Via Ch!
iantigiana 5, Panzano in
Chianti (
If you want to bring a bottle of wine, these are the two well-supplied enoteche, or wine shops, within a block of the restaurant
in Panzano: Enoteca Baldi, Piazza Bucciarelli, 25, Panzano in Chianti; 055-852-843. Enoteca del Chianti Classico di Panzano in
Chianti, Via Chiantigiana, 15-19, Panzano
in Chianti; 055-852-495.
virbila@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/features/
food/la-fo-critic20sep20,0,4062155.story
?coll=la-home-food
(RECIPE BELOW)
DARIO CECCHINI'S MARROW-BRAISED BEEF
Total time:
30 minutes, plus 3 hours braising time
Servings: 8
Note: Adapted
from Dario Cecchini's recipe. Have the butcher remove
the bone from the beef and cut the bone in half lengthwise, and trim excess fat
and remove blood vessels and ligaments from the meat. It's helpful too to have
the butcher flatten the meat slightly with a mallet to make it easier to roll.
From the split bone, you can easily scoop out the marrow from each side with a
small metal spatula.
Beef shank (about 5 pounds including bone)
Marrow from shank
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, chopped
2 ta! blespoons
olive oil
2 pounds shallots, peeled
1 cup beef stock or good quality frozen beef broth
1/2 cup vin santo
1. Heat the oven
to 350 degrees. Season both sides of the beef with 2 teaspoons salt and
one-half teaspoon black pepper. On a cutting board, lay open the boned meat
with the fat side down. Place the marrow in the center of the opened meat,
along the same direction as the grain. Sprinkle one-quarter teaspoon salt,
one-quarter teaspoon black pepper and the chopped rosemary over the marrow.
Roll the meat tightly, enclosing the marrow, and tie the roast with butcher
string.
2. In
a large ovenproof casserole, heat 2 tablespoons oil over
medium-high heat until nearly smoking. Sear the tied beef on all sides until
well-browned, about 12 minutes.
3. Remove the beef
from the pan and set aside. Add the peeled shallots to the pan and cook over
medium heat until they begin to turn golden brown, a! bout
5 minutes. Increase the heat to high and stir in the beef stock or broth to
deglaze the pan, scraping up any brown bits at the bottom of the pan.
4. Return the beef
to the pan. Cover it and cook for 1 1/2 hours. Add the vin santo and cook for
another 1 1/2 hours. Baste the roast a few times during cooking. Remove the
beef and allow it to rest for 10 minutes. Cut the strings, slice across the
grain and spoon the shallots and sauce over it.
Each
serving:
447 calories; 35 grams protein; 19 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 23 grams
fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 74 mg. cholesterol; 788 mg. sodium.
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