The Scene At Boccalone

Even before eating at Incanto, I admired chef Chris Cosentino’s website and blog for his its demonstration of passion for meat, which includes the respectful raising, treatment, and slaughter of animals and using as much of them as possible. Eating there is really terrific. The menu, consisting of “rustic Italian cooking”, does highlight offal and “unusual” cuts of meat, but is truly diverse and can accommodate any diet. We’ve only been once, and we had a long and tremendous meal that included a flight of Toscana wines, stuffed peppers (it was late summer), a pig trotter cake, sublime chicken liver ravioli with aged balsamic, and a roasted goat leg with, if I remember, a sort of salsa verde, and finally a bay leaf panna cotta (which was also delicious, and testament to the range of Incanto’s staff).

So with this experience in mind, I’ve wanted to join the Salumi Society at Boccalone for months, the salumi company founded by Cosentino and Mark Pastore, the owners of Incanto. I mean, “tasty salted pig parts.” Uh huh. I don’t know what took me so long! But finally I signed up, and Saturday hopped the bus up to Noe Valley to pick up my first box.

While in the neighborhood, I visited the N.V. Farmer’s Market for some greens. The Market is kind of, what do you expect in Noe Valley?, cute, I guess. More strollers than vendors. I will confess that I was a little over-served of Franziskaner and bourbon the night before, and it was freaking hot on Saturday, and I was grouchy about the strollers and the dogs. I had to remind myself, though, that I was the visitor and should smile. So I smiled.

When I finally made it to Incanto, everything got better. First of all, as pictured below, the first thing you encounter is a table full of meat! That brightens anyone-not-vegetarian’s day. Three meats were out for sample, Ciccioli, or braised scraps of lean pork meat and skin, seasoned with garlic and rosemary; a delicious salami of “three peppers”, and prosciutto cotto, a treat I have a hard time passing up in any context. Terry, the staff on hand, gave me my box and went through it with me, describing all of the products and the best ways to use them. He was really affable, and maybe it was the weather but everybody seemed really happy to be in a room surrounded by tasty salted pig parts at 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

There weren’t a lot of people there so early, but I imagine it becomes a little bit of a scene on “salumi Saturdays”. I really recommend checking it out! The box, by the way, came with a fennel-brown sugar salami (amazing), coppa di testa (head cheese, my first ever, so still waiting for sandwich time), capocollo (cured meat from the pig’s neck), and Italian sausages, which I roasted last night and served with cassoulet-style cannellini beans and Happy Boy farms rainbow chard, purchased from the Noe Valley Farmer’s market while dodging three strollers and a pack of dogs.

Ribollita means “re-cooked.” Essentially a soup consisting of stale bread, vegetables, and beans, it fits into the category of classic “peasant” dishes. That’s the conventional story about ribollita anyway. The first real version I had was at Delfina, and “Ribollita ‘Da Delfina’” was not what one might expect if one expects soup. Ribollita ‘Da Delfina’ is a dense, dark brown cake; the bread, vegetables, and beans had virtually melted into one another, and left only their traces in color and texture: a sliver of orange carrot, a patch of cakiness from the bread. It was delicious, and also, I thought, an amazing vehicle for battuti, or mirepoix, or aromatics, however you want to say it.

Reading around recipes for ribollita mostly seem to refer to something more like a conventional soup. However, the two or three times I had ribollita in Tuscany, it was always in the dense, cakey style that Delfina used. When I decided to make ribollita for supper this weekend, I consulted recipes that I had in my library, but was so excited to find that Davina Cucina had printed Romeo Colzi’s Ribollita recipe, the “signature dish” and Trattoria Mario. I should say only briefly here that Trattoria Mario is one of my favorite places on this earth, and I not only begged Alli to go there for lunch every single day we were in Firenze, but likely weakened my case by never shutting up about Trattoria Mario. And we had had the ribollita at Trattoria Mario, and it was tremendous.

Ribollita takes at least two days to make. And part of the foundation is, of course, the bread. I decided that I wanted to try and use Tuscan-style bread for my ribollita. That might be against better judgment, because Tuscan bread is, uh, horrible (every place, even Tuscany, ought to be allowed one serious gastronomical disaster, no?). Again, this is not the moment to explore the myth and reality behind Tuscan bakers’ decision to make saltless bread. This is just the moment to reiterate that I enjoy bread with flavor, thanks, and Tuscan bread doesn’t have it.

But for ribollita, I thought it would be a fun experiment, so Friday night after work I made the dough for saltless bread. I combined 1 package active dry yeast with a little bit of lukewarm water until it looked foamy and smelled ready. To that I added 2 cups of warm water, mixed well, and added 5 cups of all purpose flour. I kneaded this dough by hand, and it only needed a little bit of extra flour for dusting, less than ¼ cup. I put this dough in a large bowl, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator. Within an hour it had swelled, and by the next morning, despite my punching it down before bed, it was gigantic! It was as if salt had been a restraining force in all previous breads. I let the dough return to room temperature, and kneaded it a second time; then formed a (gigantic) loaf, put it on a sheet covered in parchment paper, and let it rise one last time, for an hour. I baked the loaf in a 395 degree oven for 30 minutes. It came out beautiful, and as it cooled on the rack it made a lot of noise!

The idea of the bread in ribollita is that it’s leftover and thus stale. So obviously it is a little weird to make fresh bread that one has no intention of eating at all; in that spirit I figured I must try at least one tiny slice of the inevitably disgusting flavorless loaf cooling in front of me. And, honestly? It was pretty good. It was way more flavorful than any bread I had in Tuscany. It was kind of an honest white sandwich bread, and hot out of the oven? No complaints. Anyway, it was doomed.

The second part of ribollita is to make the soup, also done the day before it’s reboiled. The soup is made by cooking 1 lb. of white beans until soft and saving the liquid. Then, sauté 2 finely chopped red onions in olive oil in a heavy-bottomed, large pot. When the onions are soft, after about 20 minutes, add a ladle of cooking water from the beans and let it stew for a minute or a two. Then add 1 thinly sliced head of cabbage (the recipe suggests whatever is seasonal—I went for a dark purple cabbage in homage to the hue at least of cavolo nero), 4 thinly sliced celery stalks, 4 thinly sliced carrots, ½ a cup of chopped parsley, and a bunch of basil, its leaves torn. This cooks for 20 minutes, covered. Then add half of the beans, and puree the other half. Add the puree, and leftover liquid from the beans. Stir. Add 2 tbsp. tomato paste, pinches of oregano, and season to taste with salt, pepper, and red pepper. At this point, the recipe calls for “water”. Since I knew I wanted my ribollita to end up very thick and dense, I added only enough water to cover the vegetables by ½ inch. I brought this to a boil and let it simmer for 90 minutes. Once it cooled, it too went into the refrigerator overnight.

Finally, yesterday, with the soup’s flavors mingled and the saltless bread stale, it was time to make ribollita. I reheated the soup very slowly over low-medium heat until periodic bubbles rose to the surface, and then added the bread, torn into chunks and placed in layers. I used almost that whole gigantic loaf of bread, and then as I brought the soup to a boil, stirred constantly until the bread broke apart and became what the recipe called a “cream.” The recipe also suggested that one could add more water or bean broth at this point, but I wanted this soup to cook down into the cakey texture I had loved so much at Delfina and Trattoria Mario.

After the soup had simmered for an hour or so, I poured it into a glass roasting pan, drizzled olive oil on the top, and browned it in a very hot oven for 10 minutes. The result? It was really, really good. The vegetables had disintegrated, except for, as I remembered, traces of orange carrot and black specks which were remnants of the cabbage. The texture was thick, and the flavor very deep.

Really the only downside to the entire experience was that it turned into summer for a weekend in San Francisco and, at 80 degrees outside and what felt like 120 inside, it was just far too hot to eat ribollita. But as a dish that’s entirely forgiving of variation and instincts on the part of whoever cooks it, it was totally pleasurable to make and eat. Which we’ll be doing for, you know, at least four days, so we’re lucky for that! And we do live in San Francisco, after all, so it could easily be wintry enough any minute, and the re-reboiled ribollita a perfect comforting accompaniment to a freezing day.

Since becoming seriously interested in cooking and food over the last couple of years, I have been lucky and/or financially reckless enough to eat at some pretty amazing restaurants. So it’s with some hesitation but not really reservation that I say that the best restaurant experience I have ever had was at a restaurant called Solociccia, in Panzano in Chianti last month.

I found it almost by accident. I knew that I wanted to visit Panzano, and the butcher shop owned by Dario Cecchini, made famous by Bill Buford’s book Heat. Buford presents a portrait, or possibly a caricature, of Cecchini as a madman who was possibly the most knowledgeable butcher in the world. The “mad” part, by the way, had a lot to do with Cecchini’s obsession with Dante, and his ability to recite from the Commedia at length. But the description of the shop, and the butcher, and the town, was intriguing. When I was doing research about how to find the shop and Panzano in Chianti, I found that Dario had opened a restaurant, called Solociccia, or “only meat.” The website had one link, called “RULES” in English. The rules:

“This is not a restaurant. It is the home of a butcher. All that you will eat is the fruit of my work and that of my family. You will not choose from a menu, though you will be treated well, and with great respect, if you return the favor. You will eat at a communal table, together in “convivio.” There will be six meat courses, chosen at my discretion, with seasonal vegetables, white beans with olive oil, foccacia bread, wine cake, coffee, and after dinner liquors. All of the above is to be had for 30 euro, with nearly two hours at our table, at the end of which you will turn over your seat to the next guests. We do not serve steak. We are open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings with seatings at 7:00 and 9:00 pm, on Sunday we sit down for lunch at 1:00 pm. In closing, please be aware that everything: the food, the wine the space and we ourselves are for better or worse…thoroughly Tuscan. P.S. Please feel free to bring your own wine without corkage fee. Welcome. (If you dare!).”

Uh huh.

So I made reservations.

We planned on visiting Panzano and the shop a little before our dinner but as we were driving towards where we were staying I saw a sign for Panzano, 6 kilometers away! And I persuaded Alli to go. The shop was amazing. It was small. Walking in, to the left was the butcher’s case which had several cuts of meat, olives, and a huge bowl full of lardo (Alli’s favorite). On the other side, a long table, with huge serving platters, holding meatballs and spicy jam, tons of lardo and baguette, finocchiona, and huge decanters of wine and glasses. Next to that was a stool with the massive arista pictured here. Dario himself was having his picture taken by some Brits, and when they left he grumbled a little and then went over to slice the arista. I asked him if they were porchetta, and he explained in fair English that porchetta is the whole pig, but this was arista (I would learn how utterly delicious arista is later, at other places). The other person working was a young woman, and I think she noticed that Alli and I were a little hesitant, so she came over and poured us glasses of wine, and said, Eat! So we did. And it was superlative, all of it.

So I had a feeling that Solociccia was not going to be disappointing.

We went the next night, driving on a dirt road (that in the States would have no name, but was called Santa Maria Macerata), and got to Panzano early. We hung out at a bar across the street and had a couple aperitifs, and then went over. One thing the RULES didn’t state is that there are only two tables, in two separate rooms. And also that the meal doesn’t begin until everyone is there. We walked in behind a group of four young Americans, and for one second I wondered if we hadn’t ended up at a fake restaurant, you know, a tourist trap for blithering foodies who thought they had found Disneyland Toscana. It wasn’t to be. We were seated at a table with eight Italians, two couples, a pair of women (aunt, niece or something), and a pair of older men.

On the table already were a couple of courses: pinzimonio di verdure dell’orto, or I guess seasonal vegetables. This was thinly sliced fennel, carrots, ack, I’m forgetting, other things. Also the pane di Panzano, or typically saltless Tuscan bread. We were the only ones who had taken Dario up on the wine-with-no-corkage, so the waiter handed me a corkscrew and two glasses. I opened up a very delicious bottle of Classico. Quickly, once everyone at our table was seated, a bell rang and the waiter walked over to a stainless steel dumbwaiter on the wall. This bell would come to mean only good things: rumblings from the meat basement. He brought us the first course, crostini di sugo all’uso di Natale. I can’t find an adequate translation, but essentially they were fluffy pieces of bread completely covered in a meat sauce. The crostini were served on two large platters, and the waiter handed them to people at the table to take as much as they wanted, and then pass. Everyone did. The crostini were far from subtle, and they were terrific. And maybe that’s the first time I really realized that something we were in for something different at Solociccia. Not only the take-some-and-pass-it-down thing, though I can hardly see that working out too well at the Cracker Barrel or any other all-you-can-and-by-can-we-mean-can-eat hovel. It was the presentation. Or the lack of presentation. It’s bread and meat sauce. That’s it. Eat it.

Our waiter when he brought the courses announced the name of the course and then came over to Alli and I and tried to provide a translation, which was very appreciated if sometimes misleading. The people at the table, who had started by pretty much chatting with their dinner partner, started to all talk to each other. They laughed a lot. One of the couples had a dog with them. Now and then Alli caught them feeding the dog from the table. Luckiest dog, uh, ever.

Ring ring went the dumbwaiter and the next course was brought out, fritto del macellaio, which I think I can translate as “Fried stuff a butcher makes.” Amazing, totally not greasy but altogether fried onion, whole sage leaves (a revelation), chicken fried pork cutlets, and small breaded meatballs that burst with lemon when you bit into them. When the waiter came with the third course and announced the name, ramerino in culo, everyone laughed. We laughed too but didn’t know why. The waiter told us, “it means, uh, um, rosemary…rosemary in the behind.” So the third dish, Rosemary In The Ass, was a small ball of ground beef, with a rosemary sprig stuck in one end, and the other end seared, for what was obviously a very brief amount of time; enough to make one side slightly gray. The ass end, with the rosemary sprig, was raw. And awesome.

Another thing to point out, we weren’t too full already, like we would be in an American restaurant. The genius of take-what-you-want-pass-it-down is that you really can just take what you want. I only needed a few bites of fried things a butcher makes, and I really only needed one raw beef ball. Don’t get me wrong—they were perfect, but it was also perfect to have a little bite (I’m reminded by way of a negative example of a really nice lunch place I went to one time in Healdsburg at which I ordered chicken livers, because, you know, I’m all about them. The owner himself brought them to me and said, “And here’s the best thing on the menu” and I’m all about them except it was a gigantic plate full of chicken livers in a thick balsamic sauce which, again, were awesome, but I could eat about ¼ of it.)

It did already feel, though, like a bit of a marathon by the time muscolini alla salvia came out, a braised pork butt (Alli pointed out that it reminded her of carnitas) with tons of sage. And then possibly my favorite course, tenerumi in insalata, which the waiter said was “Boiled beef with salsa,” but deserves a better explanation. Tenerumi are tendons, and the beef parts were cartilaginous but not squishy, and seasoned lightly, so the flavor of the tendons came out and provided a foil to the salsa verde-ish insalata of fennel, celery, carrots, and onions. Finally, we were served braciole rifatte, which unlike the American braciole (braJOL), consisted of thin slices of breaded beef in a spicy tomato sauce full of capers.

Okay.

So we ate all the courses and they were all terrific, and all the plates were still on the table in case anybody wanted to revisit anything, which people did as they pleased. When everything was done, a basket of olive oil cake was brought over and everyone had a slice. The hostess asked us if wanted caffe. Half of us did. Then she brought three liters of liquor and put them on the table and gave everybody a clean glass.

All right. Imagine this happening, uh, anywhere in the United States. Having trouble? Right. The bottles were three different kinds of liqueur, one was grappa, another slightly sweet but unidentifiable, another totally unidentifiable but our favorite. Everybody tried all three, and while I definitely sensed at the end of this round of drinks that everybody was a little bit tipsy, nobody, like, had a chugging contest or asked their friend to turn them upside down for a keg stand. It was moderately consumed. It was consumed in the way it was meant to be consumed: take what you want, pass it down. You didn’t pay for it, necessarily, so there wasn’t an anxiety to finish. It was the perfect ending.

I think the best way to illustrate how profoundly unique this was, though, is to say that when I walked out of the little room with our table in it, I was completely shocked to find that we had to pay for our meal. I don’t mean that I didn’t know beforehand that the meal cost 30 euro, after all, that was in the rules. But at some point in the almost two hours we spent at the butcher’s table, Alli and I both forgot that we were even at a restaurant.

At some point, Dario charged into our room to ask everyone tutti bene? Bene bene bene, that was the chorus. He smiled tipsily, acknowledged that all was indeed good, and left. And it was good, all of it.