The title above is a “genteel” translation of Carne in Galera, a name that actually means Jailhouse Meat. The joky name is typical of Dario Cecchini, the celebrity butcher-restaurateur of Panzano in Tuscany. Dario is as famous for his antic disposition as for his meat cookery.
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I encountered the man and his cooking at a New York restaurant, where Dario prepared and presented a Cena Della Vacca Intera, or Dinner of the Whole Cow. This consisted of five courses of different beef dishes, using cuts dal colle al culo. That is, from the neck to the – opposite end! Carne in Galera was the last and for Tom and me the best of a stellar collection.
Dario gave a commentary on each of his preparations, and his wife, Kim, cheerfully 
translated for her exuberant spouse. As regards Jailhouse Meat, he said that, in the old days in Tuscany, prisoners in jail were fed on the most undesirable, toughest cuts of beef, which were cooked for hours in vinegar to make them edible. Of course, those can be the most flavorful cuts when carefully treated, as this day’s version proved.
Before the evening ended, Kim was kind enough to describe Dario’s recipe to me, while I scribbled these notes on the back of my menu:
Take neck beef or similar. Chunk it up. Brown it in ground-up beef fat. Add half and half water and vinegar. Cook 3-4 hours on top of stove. 15 minutes before the end, add chopped rosemary and sage, a few drops more vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.
It sounded so simple, I knew I’d want to try it. And this week I did.
The neck beef that’s sold hereabouts is inconveniently shaped if you aren’t cutting up your own cow, so I chose to use eye of chuck. It’s one of the humbler cuts, very tasty, best for stews or pot roasts. (It also makes great boiled beef, with its sinewy-looking center seam melting into gelatinous deliciousness.)
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For browning it, I’d asked my butcher for a slab of beef suet, which I put through a meat grinder and then rendered (carefully preserving the excess, which is great for frying potatoes in). I had my own wine vinegar, homemade in a now-defunct vinegar barrel we used to keep for recycling wines left over from Tom’s working tastings.
After browning two pounds of beef chunks, I added half a cup each of vinegar and water, covered the pot and simmered it for three hours, stirring occasionally. The meat tenderized beautifully; in fact, I probably should have stopped half an hour sooner, because during the final cooking with the fresh herbs, some of my chunks began to fall apart. It wasn’t a problem, though: For serving I just “jailed” the meat in a ring of mashed potatoes, which went well with it and especially appreciated the gravy.
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At the restaurant dinner, the Carne in Galera was accompanied by Tuscan beans, which also worked very well. In fact, the beans live in memory as the lightest part of the whole meal.
While my dish wasn’t as transcendent as Dario’s, it was extremely good. The long simmering in vinegar gave the beef a spicy lift, faintly akin to sauerbraten. Neck beef, as Dario used, is more gelatinous than chuck; in his dish it seemed to balance out the vinegar better and produce a denser gravy. But altogether, my version made for a warming, comforting dinner – just right on one of those unseasonably chilly, damp evenings we’ve endured this spring.
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