4th of July 2024
10 July 2024. I am back home from our usual Independence Day celebration at La Casella. Thanks in part to incredible set-up work by the Rowe-Hendler crew in 2022 for the first edition, Alaina has turned this into a tuned and well attended event.
We had about 50 people again. It seems like a good size for this party. We don't have fireworks, partly because I don't like them and mostly because we don't want to burn down Tuscany. But we do have a lot of food.
We've moved the grill to a new spot next to the old pigsty, which is better sheltered and has good sun protection from the oaks. This year, our friend Valerio wrote me about a week before the party:
– David, you need some help grilling this year.
– I do?
– Yes. What time should I come?
– Oh! The party is at the 18s¹ for 19:30. Come at around 17?
Valerio is an expert. He knows more about everything Anghiari, about woodworking, about chestnuts, and about grilling than you can fit in the national library in Florence, which is the nation's largest.
With the two of us at the grill and with two prep tables this year, we had:
40 sausages from the wonderful butcher Mao
Lots of eggplant / aubergines / melanzane
Some sweet peppers. They had several colors at the so-called farmstand Calabresi in Sansepolcro. (They do an amazing lunch, and I recommend it to anyone visiting Anghiari. We went with my mom recently.)
40 pork ribs in three different preps – apricot barbecue sauce in a California style, a Texas rub that I bought from a charming fellow at the farmer's market next to our bank in The Woodlands, and just plain salt for just plain Tuscans.
Tons of zucchini / courgettes. Our architect Ilaria brought us beautiful round zucchini from her garden.
Some red onions. Valerio and I both agree that onions blow away meat as the most delicious thing on most grills. The red onion that gets the most love in Italy is a variety grown in Tropea, on the volcanically rich coast of Calabria. It is the only IGP onion in Italy. (France has AOP for the Roscoff onion and the Cévennes onion, both of which are also sweet.)
a whole beef sirloin that I bought from my favorite butcher in Les Ternes. She sealed it in the vacuum sealer with a strong dose of my coffee-based barbecue sauce. She had to cut the 7kg sirloin in half to fit in the sealer, and that meant better marination. It travelled in a 25ℓ camping cooler with lots of ice on the flight to Bologna and then with me to Anghiari. She reminded me as I told her what I was doing with it: 'remember to tell them that you got it from a lady-butcher. We are rare.' (We say bouchère in French; I don't think 'butcheress' is a proper translation).
some fennel bulbs, which I love on the grill
2025 could be the year that I outgrow the small gas grill and move to something more substantial. Alaina and I recently re-discovered how good smoked barbecue can be at the famed Corkscrew in old Spring village outside Houston. Onions might be the best; good brisket is close. Many – maybe most – people in the U.S. have been recently influenced by Aaron Franklin and his lucid explanations in print and in video masterclasses about preparing brisket.
¹I don't know why, but Italian times are plural. 'Alle otto' for 'at 8 o'clock'.
People made fast work of the meat in particular. I kept it coming till the table was gone.
Also, we were surprised at how late people stay even on a school night. In 2025, the U.S. Independence Day is a Friday, so we are expecting that more kids will be able to come.
We had quite a few sweets, including one peach pie that I made using an all-butter crust. It seemed quintessentially American, which might be why it was eaten but not completely. The real star of the dessert table: Alaina's excellent cookies du péage, which are the basic Toll House recipe, only using butter from Brittany and chocolate chips from Edwart.
One food that disappeared completely: cheese. I had brought a half a brie de Meaux and a big piece of fourme d'Ambert from Paris, since these types of cheeses are unfamiliar in Tuscany. We also had young salted rounds from our neighbor Stefano's goat farm and creamery. And there were some other cheeses. I got none, because they were all eaten.
We learn more each year. One lesson: if we have lots of beer, people will drink it. We were counselled 'if young people are coming, make sure also to have beer'. So we did. The regrettable side is that mediocre factory beer has been supplanting the mediocre — and worse — local wine for more than a century. The less regrettable side is that microbreweries are now dotted throughout Tuscany. Some are even using some chestnuts in brewing, which is probably as old a regional custom as winemaking, including La Luppolaia in nearby Caprese Michelangelo.
Fortunately, we missed this year multiple bottles of homemade prosecco. It was described by reviewers as 'nose is mostly ammoniac, with hints of bitumen and acetone. There is no finish, as no one dare's taste it'.
We did a fair amount of cleanup that evening, and we had more hands working so it took less time. We even slid the giant barn doors closed, with enough muscle. They might be opened once again next year — there is still one hinge on each side.
I think we had a fun party.