Arrosto — the feast-day roast
Cappone arrosto al Trebbiano (roast capon in white wine)
FestiveReconstruction🧂 🍄moyen1 h 50
A golden roast capon, rubbed with garlic and rosemary, basted throughout cooking with Trebbiano white wine and olive oil until it yields a fragrant jus. The gala roast of Medici Tuscany.
Arrosto — the feast-day roast
A golden roast capon, rubbed with garlic and rosemary, basted throughout cooking with Trebbiano white wine and olive oil until it yields a fragrant jus. The gala roast of Medici Tuscany.
When the Medici, my illustrious patrons, deigned to honor my table — or when I wished to celebrate a discovery snatched from the heavens — we would roast a fine capon. Rub it with garlic and that sprig of rosemary I picked myself, and baste it relentlessly with Florence's Trebbiano: for just as a body falls and accelerates according to a constant rule, so the skin browns evenly provided it is basted at regular intervals. Serve it surrounded by its golden juices, and raise your glass to the stars.
Ingredients
- •Capon (or fine free-range chicken) — 1 whole (centerpiece)
- •Rosemary and sage — several sprigs (Tuscan fragrance)
- •Garlic — one head (aromatic)
- •Trebbiano white wine from Tuscany — a good glass (basting and jus)
- •Tuscan olive oil — generous (browning and binder)
- •Salt and pepper — to taste (seasoning)
How it was made : In Galileo's time, roasting was done on a spit before the hearth, the spit sometimes turned by a weight or smoke mechanism — a domestic cousin of the machines that Renaissance engineers, including Galileo, studied. Wine was used both for basting and to flavor the juices.