duke to enjoy stakes this big, and fabio wants to cook for me tuscany s signature dish, the magnificent bistecca alla fiorentina. good. and in case lunch isn t looking worthy enough of like, 10 men, fabio picks out a little appetizer, yet another cut of meat. that s good. we head back to the deli fabio owns. thank you. have a look at that, look at the flowers.
murphy is sneaking me in for an audience with the most powerful medici of them all. where is he? he s right, right there. oh my. meet cosimo primo de medici. he led the family at their dizzying heights in the 1500 s. in this fresco undergoing restoration he s become so powerful he s being crowned grand duke of tuscany by the pope himself. he marries an extremely wealthy woman, the spanish princess eleanora de toledo. not only does she bring a lot of money but she brings a lot of the new spices from the new world. the chocolates, the coffee, everything that is the cuisine. that s when the tomato arrived? that s when it arrives, more or less at that time. which completely altered italian completely, completely. cuisine. cosomo de medici cultivated the city and the arts in the ideas that grew here in the renaissance changed how we all see the world. but this family also changed
there aren t too many of them. and then, completely by chance, we come across another. but the sign would be from where? the sign warm right there was tucci. touching. the little doors of paradise. no. hi, how are you doing? how are you? to end the evening, we head out to tuscany s favorite nightcap, the local desert wine, vin santo the holy wine.
the world in the way things taste. it may seem a long way from michelangelo to the greatest t-bone steak you ve ever eaten but the medici had a hand in that too. secret. fabio may look like he s fallen out of a renaissance painting but he s actually a well known chef, a born and bred florentine, and the master of needs. back in the 1500 s most people wouldn t even get close to cuts of meat this good. tuscany s famous chianina cattle needed lots of land, that was hugely expensive to run. of course, the medici didn t need to worry about that. but why? why the moon? why the sun? 500 years later, thankfully, you don t need to be a grand
[speaking non-english] these are ingredients both rooted in the poor fishing community and livorno s immigrant past. it s a part of tuscany s history. and fabiola is not finished. in true tuscan tradition, nothing goes to waste. so he whips up a second course with the leftover sauce [speaking non-english] you have all the flavors of the sea. what could you do with it. beautiful. the sauce that he had left. it only makes sense. best thing in the world. [speaking non-english] i feel very lucky that my parents followed their hearts and moved us across the world for a year when we were just