How Tuscan Butcher Dario Cecchini Breaks Down a Pig
When you're a larger-than-life character like Dario Cecchini, a mythical quality can follow you around. So while it's a fact that Cecchini, the storied butcher of Chianti, has long been a mentor to Mario Batali, some of the legends about him—"singing butcher," "meat whisperer," that kind of thing—aren't entirely true. Although he will leap upon a banquet table, blow a one-valve bugle, and recite long passages from Dante's Divine Comedy at a moment's notice. No wonder he's intimidated the likes of Anthony Bourdain and counts René Redzepi among his fans. The influence of Cecchini, who owns a macelleria and three small restaurants in his tiny hometown of Panzano, has certainly been felt worldwide in the growing number of artisanal butcheries that share his philosophies of honor, respect, and responsibility (his words) in the handling pork and beef, the only animals he cuts. During a recent visit to Las Vegas, Dario agreed to give us a detailed demonstration of how he butchers a side of pork, using the kitchen of Batali's Carnevino restaurant (where his protégé, Nicole Brisson, presides as executive chef) and a 220-pound heritage Duroc from Olsburg, Kansas.
"I am in the phase of my life as an artisan where I feel the need to give away everything I have learned, and sow the seeds for the future," Dario told us in Italian, with his American wife, Kimberly, translating. "To leave my work better than I found it."
1/23Dario Cecchini primarily uses three blades to finish a pig: an 11" cleaver, a 12" steak slicer or filet knife, and a 6" boning knife (a gift from a Japanese student). "When I was young, I searched for the perfect knife," says Dario. "Then I focused more on cutting the perfect way. What I realized is the perfect way of cutting had to come from inside me, an equilibrium between my hands, my head and my heart."
2/23Dario recommends cutting at refrigerator temperature if possible: 0 to 4 degrees Celsius. Cold meat is more compact, he says, and less slippery. Says Cecchini, "Most people look at meat as a pyramid—prime cuts at the top, less important ones at the bottom. In my opinion, there are easier cuts, but it's all equally good if prepared well. Not a pyramid, but a circle."
3/23Cecchini's first cut is at the tailbone, separating the proscuitto (a.k.a. hind leg) with two or three whacks of the cleaver, and finishing the fat with the slicing knife. "There's a 'normal' way of cutting and there's my way," he says, when asked about some typical cuts like bacon, belly and babybacks (none of which he separates). Although his Antica Macellaria Cecchini trades on seven prior generations of butchers in his lineage, Dario adopted the family business just before his father's death (he's since added three distinct eateries), and so was largely self-taught.
4/23Here Dario moves to the front of the body, counts down 4 or 5 ribs from the top of the rib cage, and divides the whole carcass with the cleaver first, again finishing with the slicer.
5/23As he finishes the separation of the center cut, Dario begins explaining the mythos of arista alla porchetta: the formal preparation of the rolled pork roast. "Like many Tuscan recipes, arista is symbolic—and perhaps the most important recipe of the Renaissance—because it represents the idea of convivial dining, which was a pivotal element of that time, bringing everyone together at the dining table, and celebrating nature in the spirit of Lucretius."
6/23"The fat tells you a lot of truths," Dario says. "I'm looking for dense fat and thick skin, the signs of an older animal, 1 1/2 to 2 years old. I don't ever work with baby animals. They haven't developed flavor." Cecchini uses trimmings of the external fat layer to make his burro di Chianti (i.e., rendered lard). The center fat, or "leaf lard," can be rendered for cooking oil, and used specifically in a Carnevale cake called schiacciata alla fiorentina.
7/23Dario finds the tip of the shoulder bone and carves around it with the small knife, pulling it free with his hand. Then he finds the other shoulder bones. "Cutting an animal is a series of finding hidden things. Think of it as if you're making sculpture," he says, making reference to Michelangelo's description of carving away stone to find his David within it. "All Tuscan artisans take inspiration from the Renaissance."
8/23"I'm looking for the heart of the shoulder," he says, trimming stray pieces for sausage. "To leave the heart of the muscle group intact." Enigmatically, he adds: "If I think too much, my hands are in danger."
9/23Cecchini uses an electric bandsaw just to cut away the thoracic ribs. Like many of the other bones and scraps, they will go towards broth or head cheese. "One hundred years ago," he says, "Pellegrino Artuzzi said the most important recipe is broth. Broth is like medicine." Cecchini finishes his into soup with kale and beans.
Sabin Orr10/23Dario separates some modest-sized chops from the shoulder. "This is the most flavorful cut to grill—it has particularly flavorful fat," he says, showing how to rub these shoulder chops with fennel pollen and then cook them with winter kale, another symbolic recipe that represents the meeting of seasons, since the pollen can only be collected for a brief period in summer. "Every piece has its own flavor and texture." As he continues, the kitchen grills one of the seasoned chops for us; it's dense, juicy like a very savory piece of beef, and perfectly accented by the texture and bitterness of the kale.
11/23"Hardworking muscle has collagen to hold the sausage together, fat adds flavor," Dario tells us. "The head and the feet become soppressata. The bones and skin are added to the soppressata pot. The only things I add to sausage are salt, pepper, and garlic."
12/23About 6 to 8 inches up from the tip of the hoof, Dario cuts the fat layer around the leg with a small knife and then with his hand snaps the bones. The leg may go into headcheese or soppressata, or be boiled with potatoes. He also offers his grandmother's recipe for preserving the trotter to use as a soup base: "Butterfly the trotter, soak in vinegar for 4 days, then spread a paste of rosemary, salt, and ground garlic on the inside and let sit for a week. Rinse, replace the paste with a layer of ground black pepper, and hang to dry. Later, you can bring it back to life like bacalao."
13/23Dario starts on the ham by cutting away the tail bone and connected cartilage. "Work slowly here so you don't ruin your knife," he advises. "Every pig is different. I'm finding an extra bit of bone in this one—maybe from an accident when it was young."
14/23"You have to always try to have the blade pointing away from you," Dario says, "turning the meat if necessary to get the right angle. If you can't do that, you have to change how you hold the knife."
15/23Dario studied veterinary science before returning to his family trade. But that gave him insight into how the muscle groups interacted. "I didn't have much of a chance to study how my father cut before he died," he says, though he believe the elder Cecchini was more conventional in his style. "And as it turns out, the person I turned to as a mentor ended up working for me."
16/23"The shoulder and ham become tonno di Chianti, our specialty," says Dario, "deboned, salted and boiled in wine." The method of preserving the meat was nearly lost to the ages before Cecchini revived the recipe.
17/23Cecchini sharpens his knives frequently, almost obsessively, with the steel. "I'm a maniac about it. If I keep my knife sharp, it will last for years."
18/23"I'm giving form to the meat," Dario says, trimming any imperfect hanging parts. "Sloppy pieces won't take the salt."
19/23Dario returns to the porchetta, using the filet knife to separate the rib bones from the meat, cutting along the bone, not through the flesh, folding them and cracking them off the spine by hand, again holding his knife like a dagger for leverage. Note that there's no bacon or belly in Cecchini's world; the whole porchetta—essentially the belly plus the attached rib meat—is always a unified piece.
20/23After completely deboning the porchetta, Dario uses a propane torch to singe off any remaining hairs, while disinfecting and drying the skin. "And also, it's fun." Then, he scores the fat lengthwise every 2 to 3 inches.
21/23"You have to roll the arista so that when it roasts, the lean part is below the fattiest, so that there is an exchange," Dario advises." It's important that there is harmony." To prepare porchetta, Dario briefly explains, he rubs the flesh in succession with ample portions of salt, ground fresh garlic, fresh ground black peppercorn, fennel pollen, dried thyme, and fresh rosemary. He then adds one more powder—the profumo del Chianti, a ground-herb powder he produces himself—before rolling tightly and tying with kitchen twine every two inches. Covered with two layers of foil, the roast is cooked at 450°F for four hours over a drain pan, uncovering in the last 15 minutes to crisp the skin. Cecchini estimates he sells about 14 meters of porchetta in his macelleria every week. "You need a good party to justify doing this," Dario says, estimating it will serve 30.
22/23"In my opinion, it's not so important what breed of pig you have—I'm not a racist," Dario says with his irrepressible grin. "The best breed in the world doesn't matter if it's treated poorly. What's important is that the animal had a good life and a compassionate death, and a good butcher. If an animal hasn't had a good life, it won't feed a good life. If an animal has had a good life, its meat has the flavor of joy."
23/23Typically, cutting up a side of pork would take Dario about 10 minutes. And in case you wondered about the organ meats, Dario skewers and grills the liver; tripe gets boiled with cabbage and rice; lungs, heart, and spleen make a stew, and "the butcher gets the brains." Cecchini sums up, "Our pig here had a good life, and we gave it honor by treating every cut well."
