Pašticada

Pašticada comes from Dalmatia, the eastern Adriatic coast long ruled by Venice, which left an Italian imprint on its cooking — the dish is a cousin of the Veronese braise pastissada de caval. The oldest known recipe is documented in fifteenth-century Dubrovnik (Ragusa), and by the Renaissance pašticada had become a centerpiece of well-off Dalmatian households entertaining guests: meat, wine, dried fruit and lard all at once were themselves a display of a family's means. The day-long vinegar marinade descends from medieval meat-preservation; the prunes give the sweet-sour balance characteristic of older Mediterranean cooking. Made for weddings, baptisms and the pre-Lenten carnival, it is a dish every cook insists hers is the only proper version of — from Split to Dubrovnik there are close to twenty household recipes. Always served with homemade gnocchi (njoki) or fuži pasta.

Knife passes through the sliced beef as if it were chicken — six hours of braise has converted every fiber. The slice on the fork is dark mahogany, juicy, with the smoky bacon and garlic visible inside as ribbons. The sauce is thick and mahogany-brown, sweet-sour-savory all at once from the prune-vinegar-tomato-wine combination, with a haunting cinnamon-and-nutmeg backbone. Over gnocchi, every potato pillow soaks sauce.

Larding (inserting fat strips into the meat) is medieval-Mediterranean technique that bastes the muscle from the inside as the bacon renders during braising — prevents the lean topside from drying out over 6 hours. The 24-hour vinegar marinade penetrates partial-way into the muscle, tenderizing via acid hydrolysis. Prunes break down into a natural pectin-thickener while their sugars caramelize into the sauce body.