Day 41: Wine School And The Biggest Steak Of My Life
A day like this can be referred to as a day full of activities. We got up early and walked up to Piazzale Michelangelo where fake Michelangelo's David overlooked the city. From our apartment, we can usually see small figures looking over the town and we wanted to avoid the tourist crowds as best we could so figured an early morning "jog" would be the best way to see it. And it worked. At 8am when we reached the top, it was just us and the vendors setting up for the day. We got a few shots and as we were leaving the first two coaches came through.
Hellooooooo Firenze!
We walked straight over to the Sant'Ambrogio Market to pick up some ingredients for lunch. You really miss home cooking when you travel for a while so I was really looking forward to this. Plus, going to local markets really shows you what locals eat, and I love that.
I'm not usually a huge fan of tomatoes on their own, but I had been wanting to eat some fresh Italian tomatoes from the market since I got to this country. Fortunately they aren't in short supply.
Some of our market haul.
Look at this gorgeous ox heart tomato!
A fresh bunch of basil.
Some fresh tagliatelle. We asked for 200g and the lady laughed and told us no, we'd need at least 250g. So 250g of pasta it is.
Chez Adam cooking up a storm.
I made a caprese salad and I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty proud of it, even though it's super simple to make. Those colours!
Also, it helps that the table is marble – it makes everything look like it should be in a food magazine.
The simple pasta we made – pancetta, tomatoes, fresh basil, butter and olive oil.
Our friends Tim and Jess recommended The Tuscan Wine School to us which taught us about wines from Tuscany (surprise, surprise), how to taste wines and about the varieties from the area. It was about €45 each and we got to taste five different wines (including one that was €120 a bottle!) over two hours. I feel like we learnt a lot and were armed with some knowledge that helped to make us look less like fools when we began wine tasting around Tuscany.
You know how you are meant to let a red wine breath before serving it? A simple guide is to open your wine an hour for every year old it is eg. if it is a 2015 vintage, open it for an hour. If it is a 2010 vintage, open it six hours in advance.
A few of the wines we tasted. I'm not so good at making notes, but I am very good at drinking wine.
The Airbnb host recommended Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco (the white boar) in a pretty cool little area. We tried to get in the night before but it was packed, so we made a reservation for the next night to make sure we got in. I haven't had my fill of truffle yet, so we jumped on the burrata with truffle dish which was well worth the €12. If I could eat this again, I would.
Aaaaand the main event... Bistecca Alla Fiorentina. Over 1kg of t-bone steak cooked rare and served simply with olive oil and salt. It was big, it was meaty and so good. Crispy on the outside and red on the inside, I honestly can't believe we ate the whole thing. And the beans and spinach on the side.
Serious steak face.
And because we strangely weren't full from the steak (what is wrong with us?) we went to La Carraia for some of the best gelato in Florence.
