A thrifty Florentine second course, known across Tuscany as 'lesso rifatto con le cipolle', boiled beef cooked again. Leftover meat from making broth is sliced and returned to the pan with a great heap of sweet red onions and a little tomato, then stewed until the onions collapse into a soft, savoury sauce. The onions are the point: used in huge quantity and cooked until sweet, they turn dry, lean boiled beef into something rich and moreish, and the dish demands plenty of bread to mop the pan.
The dish began as pure cucina povera, a way of wasting nothing, above all not good meat. After boiling a piece of beef to make broth, thrifty Florentine and Chianti cooks 'remade' the leftover lesso by frying it with onions. Its odd 'little French girl' name has several explanations. One points across the Alps to the French 'boeuf miroton', a close cousin in which the onions outweigh the meat two to one. Another ties it to Caterina de' Medici: when she carried Florentine dishes such as the onion soup carabaccia to the French court and Parisian chefs reworked them in their own way, the Florentines are said to have answered the teasing by giving a French name to a plate of leftover boiled beef drowned in onions. A third links it to Certaldo on the Via Francigena, the pilgrim road, whose innkeepers cooked their leftover beef this way. The onion of choice is the sweet red onion of Certaldo, a Slow Food presidium.
Deeply savoury and gently sweet, the melted onions almost jammy against the soft, shredded beef. The tomato adds a light tang and the sauce is loose and spoonable, all of it begging to be soaked up with bread. Homely and comforting rather than refined, it tastes better still reheated the next day.
Boiling beef for broth strips it of water-soluble flavour and much of its moisture, so the leftover lesso is lean and can be dry; the remake rebuilds what the pot took away. The mountain of thinly sliced onions first sweats out its water, then, as that water cooks off and the surface climbs past about 110°C, its abundant sugars caramelise and its proteins brown through the Maillard reaction, building deep sweetness and colour, and the sweet Certaldo onion carries more sugar to begin with. Searing the beef over a lively flame browns its surface for the same savoury depth. The tomato brings acidity and glutamate for umami, while a little added liquid lets the lean meat reabsorb moisture; because the beef's collagen was already turned to gelatin in the first boiling, the second cooking leaves it tender and yielding rather than stringy.
Variations
Every family cooks it a little differently. Some keep it pure, only beef, onions, oil and salt; others add tomato, a splash of the meat broth, a bay leaf or a little vinegar for edge. The beef is usually the boiled brisket or shin left from a bollito, but any boiled meat will do, and some throw in leftover boiled chicken or tongue. Away from Florence the dish travels under its plain name 'lesso rifatto con le cipolle', and cooks who like it sharper finish it with a lick of red wine vinegar.
On the Palate
Where Francesina sits in the Italian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
7 steps · 20 min
- 18 min
Peel and slice the sweet red onions as thinly as you can.
- 225 min
Warm plenty of olive oil in a wide pan, add the onions with a pinch of salt, and cook slowly until collapsed and sweet.
Watch outCook the mountain of onions slowly until collapsed and sweet — this is the whole flavor base; rush it and they stay sharp and raw.
- 35 min
Cut or tear the leftover boiled beef into small, thin pieces.
- 46 min
Raise the heat, add the beef, and let it and the onions catch and caramelise at the edges.
- 53 min
Stir in the tomato passata and a ladle of broth or water.
- 630 min
Simmer gently for about thirty minutes, until the onions melt into a soft sauce and the beef is tender.
Watch outSimmer until the onions melt into a soft sauce and the beef is tender — the dish should be saucy and unctuous, not dry shreds.
- 73 min
Check the salt and serve hot, with plenty of bread to mop the pan.
