It’s funny how food brings back such strong memories. Walking along streets in Florence, I would catch the smell of tomato sauce when a trattoria door opened, and it would take me right back to my childhood. I grew up on the sweet smell of a meat and tomato sauce simmering on the stove. This dish also makes me think about the simple brilliance of Italian cooking. In this case, you have the sauce for one course and the main cooking together, lending their flavors to each other and giving off the most intoxicating aroma.
Braciole are rolled stuffed meat, cooked slowly for several hours in tomato sauce. On the surface, it looks like a gourmet meal, but it comes from the past, when most families couldn’t afford much meat. So that’s where you find the inventiveness of the Italian mother who wanted to feed her family well. She’d figure out how to make a little bit of meat go a long way. By cooking it in tomato sauce, the result would be a meat-flavored pasta sauce for the primo, as well as a beautifully moist and tender piece of meat for the secondo. It was the power of imagination and alchemy. What brilliance!
Ingredients
2 lb (1 kg) flank steak, cut into 1/2-inch (1 cm) slices
1/4 cup (50 ml) extra-vigin olive oil
1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup (125 ml) raisins
1 cup (250 ml) red wine
1/2 cup (125 ml) pine nuts
4 cups (1 L) tomato purée
Salt and freshly ground pepper, QB
Fresh basil leaves, QB (optional)
Directions
1. Ask your butcher for some sliced beef. Either he can flatten it for you or you can do it at home.
If you’re doing it at home, put each slice between 2 pieces of plastic wrap and go to it with a
meat pounder.
2. Put the meat on a cutting board and place the chopped parsley, raisins and pine nuts in the middle of each slice. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roll up the meat like a jelly roll, with all the ingredients inside, and use toothpicks to hold the rolls together.
3. On high heat, coat the bottom of a large saucepan with olive oil and add the garlic and braciole. Sear the meat on all sides until it turns golden brown. Add some red wine to the pan to deglaze the bits of meat stuck to the bottom. Let reduce. Add the tomato purée and salt to the pan and simmer for 2 hours.
4. If you like, tear up some basil and sprinkle it on after the dish is fully cooked.
At this point, you’ve created a perfect meat-flavored tomato sauce. You can serve your braciole with a little bit of the sauce or on its own.
Serves 4
Recipe excerpted from La Dolce Vita Cookbook by David Rocco. Published by HarperCollins Canada Ltd. Copyright 2008 by David Rocco. Excerpted with permission of HarperCollins Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Buy the book now!