One of my very favorite Italian dishes is brasciola, rolled and stuffed beef slices simmered in tomato sauce. In my youth, I refused to eat brasciola, though it was one of my grandfather’s specialties. Mind you, Nonno was a great cook. Admittedly, I was a very finicky eater as a child. Fortunately, I grew out of that. I can’t fathom how many wonderful foods I would have missed out on had the dreadful pickiness continued.
What turned me off about my grandfather’s recipe was that he used raw ground beef, which he tricked up into a meatball-type mixture, as a filling. It never seemed to be cooked right to me, with a mushy, unappealing texture. Only when I moved to New York to attend college did I grow to love this dish.
The change came about because of the Spera family—beloved Brooklyn relatives who invited me for Sunday dinner every week when I knew no one in New York. While my grandfather always used round steak, Ann and Teresa Spera used flank steak, which I find a more appropriate cut for this dish. However, the completely different filling was what won me over.
No traditional stuffing can be said to exist for brasciola. Every recipe you encounter is distinctively different. That’s one of the beauties of it. Use whatever suits you. I’ve seen recipes that include prosciutto, pesto, pine nuts, and raisins. The Speras used both bacon and salami. The bacon is unusual, but I find it gives the brasciola a particularly deep and satisfying flavor. I never actually got a copy of their recipe. Thus my version is simply an imitative recreation of what they told me they used.
On my many trips to Sicily, I wanted so much to taste the local rendition, especially in the Palermo area from which my grandparents immigrated to the United States. Sadly, I have never once seen it on a menu—not in Sicily or anywhere else in Italy. Is this something only home chefs cook? When the word has appeared on a menu, it generally referred to a simply grilled cutlet of meat.
I begin with a large flank steak, which has been trimmed of fat, butterflied, cut into two equal pieces, and pounded as thin as possible. Fortunately, either Frank or Jerry Ottomanelli, of Ottomanelli & Sons Meat Market on Bleecker Street in Manhattan expertly do this for me. The bacon, which I order cut to medium thickness, is blanched in water for about ten minutes, then rinsed and dried thoroughly. This becomes the first layer in the filling.
Layer the blanched bacon on the steak.
Next comes the salami, which goes on top of the bacon. I tend to use a homemade hot soppressata from Faicco’s Italian Specialties, also on Bleecker Street, because I’m fond of its piquant flavor. However, any spicy salami will due.
Layer the salami over the bacon.
The sliced hard-boiled eggs are layered, then the remaining ingredients are sprinkled on top of the meats. These include breadcrumbs, grated Parmigiano, parsley, fresh oregano, and garlic. Though most cooks use raw minced garlic, I prefer a somewhat muted taste, so I gently warm the garlic in olive oil first. Careful not to let the stuffing come too close to the edges of the meat, or it will fall out in cooking.
Place the eggs and remaining ingredients on top.
Once the stuffing is in place, roll the meat carefully from the narrow end, like a jelly roll.
Roll jellyroll fashion.
I make one tie with kitchen string first.
Make one tie and knot.
Then I fold the ends under and wind the string around all parts of the roll. As you can see in the photo, I’m a bit compulsive about this because I don’t want to lose any of the filling while I brown the meat in olive oil on all sides.
Tie securely and brown in a skillet.
Take the browned rolls and cook them a large quantity of your favorite tomato sauce. Simmer for about four hours, partially covered. Turn the rolls several times during the cooking.
Simmer in tomato sauce.
Remove the cooked brasciole (that’s the plural form) from the sauce and carefully cut away all the strings.
Cut off the strings.
I always let the brasciole come to room temperature before I try slicing it because it cuts more easily and neatly. You then very gently reheat the slices in the tomato sauce.
Slice and sauce.
Serve a plate of pasta as a primo course, using the sauce, which has developed a wonderful flavor from the brasciole. Then serve slices of the brasciole enrobed in tomato sauce as a secondo, accompanied by a green vegetable.
To print or download the recipe, click here.
To learn more about the major role that the Spera family played in my life (beyond cooking), click here and read my autobiography, The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater.
