‘Brascioli’ – A Meat Roll Specialty from Puglia

Mamma Angela cooks an excellent fish dish and she knows perfectly well how to prepare a vegetable. But this post is, yet again, about meat.

Maybe i’m being tested. In the spirit of honesty I have to admit that, once this dish was cooked – I didn’t eat it. But the rest of the family did and they looked pretty damn happy doing so. So I’m going to post about ‘Brascioli’ anyway.

In case you didn’t know, Mamma Angela is from Puglia – a little town not far from the coast in the heel of the Italian peninsula called Torre Santa Susanna. Some visual orientation for you:

Puglia is an amazing place. More on that in another post. Torre Santa Susanna is the quintessential small town and mealtime is important. Mamma Angela learned how to cook there, so one of the major focuses of this blog will be traditional recipes from Puglia. ‘Brascioli’ [pronounced Brah-SHOW-lee] or ‘Involtini di Manzo al Sugo’ / ‘Beef Rolls in Tomato Sauce’ is one such special recipe.

You are going to need:

1 – Thinly sliced beef – this should look like strips of really thin steak. Here they call it ‘Fettine di Manzo’. Go for low-fat, high quality – really red and really thin. Should look like this:

2 – A small onion, or half an onion. The kind you use for sautès (golden).

3 – Parsley (see my post about Italian parsley)

4 – Canned whole peeled tomatoes. Called ‘Pomodori Pelati’ here.

5 – Fresh garlic

6 – Your favorite aged cheese, or Parmigiano Reggiano (Parmesan) , Grana Padano, Pecorino – We used Grana Padano.

7 – White Wine (dry, but it really doesn’t matter. I’ve also seen Mamma Angela use red.) We need just a sprinkle.

8 – Salt

9 – Olive Oil

10 – Red Pepper “Peperoncino”

11 – Water

12 – Toothpicks

Preparation:

1 – You want to cut down your slices of beef to the right size. We used cooking scissors to do so. When rolled up, your beef roll should be no thicker in circumference than the circle created when you put your thumb and pointer finger together to make the OK sign.

2 – Cut up your cheese into small chunks, rinse off your parsley and dice up your garlic cloves. Whip out the Red Pepper flakes. Arrange them in front of you, we’re going to roll them up in our slices of beef. You can chop up the parsley, but we didn’t.

3 – Per slice of beef, place a little bit of parsley, a bit of garlic, a chunk of cheese, and a sprinkle of red pepper in the center. Then roll up and secure with a toothpick. Use the toothpick to pin the roll the same way a seamstress would use it to pin fabric together, making it go in and out on the same side, not straight through. this will keep them manageable in the pan.

4 – Now its time to cook the rolls. Use a pot, and be generous with the oil, get it nice and hot but not smoking. You don’t need to add anything to the oil. Pop in your beef rolls, then a moment later, chop up your onion (size of chunks of onion up to you! we liked them bigger, but you can make them smaller). Add the onion. Drizzle a bit of white wine. Let the rolls cook in the oil a few minutes, until they are browned all around. You can cover them in the process, but make sure to move the rolls around so they cook on all sides. Let your white wine evaporate.

5 – Once your rolls are, what we call in italian ‘rosolati’ (seared, browned, pan fried… says WordReference.com) – which should take few minutes and a medium flame – it’s time to add some canned peeled tomatoes and some water. We used a whole can and the sauce inside. Don’t leave the tomatoes whole, slice them up into bits before adding them – you can do this with a knife and fork – but you can also use your hands. Add them to the beef roll sauté you have going. Then use the same can, and add half a can of water. Salt to taste.

6 – At this point, it’s just time to sit back and let our rolls cook. Cover and stir occasionally. Ours took about 45 minutes to an hour. The sauce will look thin, that’s fine – that’s how it is supposed to look. If you see it getting too thick from cooking before the rolls are done, just add a bit of water to buy time. Cooking time will depend on your flame, we left it on a low flame because we had plenty of time until dinner. In any case, if you prepare this earlier in the day, it’s easy to heat up later and will still be good. How will you know when the rolls are done? Mamma Angela has two tips for you. One – she says the oil will rise to the top. Two – use a fork and insert it into the heart of the roll – if the fork slides in easily and you don’t feel much resistance – this means they are done. Serve with the sauce. If you like, you can even remove the rolls from the sauce and use the sauce on pasta – two dishes in one!

 

Tadaa! You now have your very own traditional recipe from Puglia.

Don’t worry, I ate too. Mamma Angela was good to me as usual and prepared two chicken cutlets in white wine and spices for me. Plus, as a primo we we had fresh fettuccine with mushrooms – which will be my next post!

Feel free to leave comments or questions for Mamma Angela. She’ll be especially happy if you share her recipes with the rest of the world!

I’ll leave you with this smiling selfie taken this past weekend – Ciao from Roma!

Eggplant or Zucchini Carpaccio (Carpaccio di Melanzane o Zucchine)

I love veggies.

It’s the one food group where I have no single dislike. And that’s hard for me, ’cause i’m really picky, as well as allergic to a lot of different foods.

But veggies? Oh they are perfect. So tasty and versatile. No weird body parts to avoid. Yum.

Thankfully, while vegetables are not often enough the protagonists of a main dish in Italy – it’s nearly always part of the meal. Vegetable dishes are often called ‘contorni’ or ‘side-dishes’.

During our trial run for posting on this blog, Mamma Angela threw together a little something that I’m going to baptize ‘Veggie Carpaccio’.

Carpaccio is the Italian word for a series of dishes where very thin slices of extremely fresh meat or fish are bathed in olive oil and or lemon juice and different aromas/spices. But today, my friends – Zucchini and Eggplant are the protagonists.

For this recipe you are going to need:

1 – Either zucchini or eggplant. Either or will work and you can make as much or as little as you like!

2 – White wine vinegar (Quality!)

3 – Olive Oil (Quality!)

4 – Garlic

5 – Fresh, Italian Flat Leaf Parsley

6  – Salt

7 – Dried red pepper (go easy on this one)

Preparation

1 – Clean and slice your veggies into flat strips, not too thick. They should be thin enough to be flexible but thick enough not to be transparent or fall apart once grilled. We’re going to grill these so they will result slightly thinner than when first cut.

2 – We used a skillet to grill the slices, but you can be creative with how you do this. You can even grill these in a barbecue or over a fireplace (we’ve done it!). If you are using a skillet, get it nice and hot, and grill each slice (or more at a time, if they fit). Press down on your slices with a fork to speed up the grilling process. They shouldn’t get soggy, just a few short minutes of grill time.

3 – Once you’ve got all of your slices grilled it’s really a matter of putting the ingredients together. You can use tupperware, and if you want to be fancy you can use a glass dish or tray – anything with borders you can stack the ingredients up in will work. Chop up the garlic and parsley into fine bits before using and crumble up your dried red pepper (if you are using the whole ones – the flakes will work just fine). It goes like this:

Layer of olive oil

Layer of veggies (use all of the same veggies in a single preparation – Italians don’t like to ‘mix’)

Layer of olive oil, dash of white wine vinger, sprinkling of parsley, sprinkling of garlic, a few dashes of salt, dash of red pepper

Layer of veggies

Layer of olive oil, dash of white wine vinger, sprinkling of parsley, sprinkling of garlic, dash of salt, dash of red pepper

Etc. Until you run out.

Regulate quantities according to taste. If you love red pepper, use more. If you love garlic, use more. Regulate your use of white wine vinegar.

Here’s a video of Mamma Angela in action, and a bit of Jonathan Edwards for your listening pleasure:

Mamma Angela’s Eggplant Carpaccio Recipe from Kimberly Ann Elia on Vimeo.

4 – Stick it in the fridge. Or don’t. Personally, I like this dish nice and cold. Also you’ll want to give the ingredients time to “meld” – so a few hours. In any case – this awesome ‘contorno’ lasts up to three days or more in the fridge. I’ve used the slices in sandwiches, as an aperitif, a side dish – everything. Just think that most nights, this very recipe is sitting on Mamma Angela’s dinner table as a complement to the meal!

Buon appetito!

Making Meatloaf & Meatballs (Polpettone & Polpettine)

Foreward

For our very first cooking lesson Mamma Angela made a curious choice.

Perhaps it’s because i’m a pseudo-vegetarian. Or because i’m really not a fan of getting hands-on with raw meat. Or maybe it’s because, that night a few weeks ago when she sent over a tupperware with her famous Meatloaf and potatoes, I ended up eating more of it than her son did. And he’s twice my size.

Was it hunger? Temporary psychosis? Who knows. Or maybe it was just really, really, really good.

This first recipe may come as a surprise to you. It’s SO simple. This is italian home cooking at its best – what counts is the quality of the most important ingredients – not the enormous amount of ingredients and flavors you can stuff in a single recipe. The quantities and timings are left vague on purpose. Mamma Angela doesn’t use a scale and or a timer (except when cooking pasta – where it’s just convenient). You’ll just have to experiment and see!

Ingredients

Selected ground beef (or any other good ground meat, like turkey or veal). Try 100g per person. Quality is important here, choose wisely.

Italian Eggs

Eggs (one per 250g of ground meat). Please note that Italian eggs look nothing like american eggs. They are smaller, and brown. Which I hear is because they come from… brown chickens! To get as close as possible, try Bio free-range medium eggs. Pictured above for reference on color and size.

Stale white bread (start with a nice fresh baked loaf from a bakery, wait a few days). In volume about 1 part stale bread to two parts meat.

Italian Breadcrumbs

Plain ole breadcrumbs. Not breadcrumbs with spices, like salt or oregano. Just breadcrumbs. Pictured above.

Fresh Parsley – from your home herb garden, if you’ve got one. 

Grated cheese (Parmesan, Grana Padano or Pecorino, depending on what you like)

One clove of garlic depending on taste

Salt

Pepper

Water

Potatoes*

Rosemary*

*Optional

Process

1 – Soak your stale bread in some water to get it soft again, just enough to soak it through without it falling to pieces.

2 – When the bread is soaked through, remove it from the water and wring it out a bit. Yep – like hand washing. Remove the crumbly “mollica” from the insides of the bread (the white part, avoiding most of the crust). Continue to wring out the mollica with your hands (you can do this in a strainer) until it’s crumbly and the excess water has been removed. Set aside.

4 – Grate your favorite aged cheese. For this go, we used Grana Padano. In volume it looks to be about half of the amount of the mollica. Mamma Angela says to use the aged, grateable cheese YOU like among Parmesan, Grana Padano, Pecorino or any of the viable alternatives.

5 – In a big bowl, mix together (with your bare, clean hands!) the ground meat, the eggs, the mollica, a smattering of chopped up Parsley, a finely chopped up clove of garlic and salt and pepper to taste. If that sounds like too little garlic – feel free to add more. Mamma Angela liked to add just enough to smell the ‘perfume’ of the garlic – but garlic lovers are free to knock themselves out.

Side note: Once we arrived at this point, Mamma Angela noted we had gone a bit… overboard. We had over a kilogram of meat on our hands. Literally. Ever resourceful, Mamma Angela announced that we would be learning TWO recipes that day. Half of the meatloaf preparation would go on to be reborn as “polpettine” or “little fried meatballs” and would serve as an appetizer for dinner that night.

6 – Time to break out those virgin breadcrumbs. Line a tray with the crumbs and, with your hands, roll and shape the meat into a loaf-like structure – rolling it around in the breadcrumbs. I told Mamma Angela that my mom used to make meat-loaf in a bread-tray to get that ‘loaf’ shape. She said that you can but it wasn’t necessary and that the meat would hold its shape in the oven.

7 – Once you have your loaf ready, pour a loaf-sized stripe of authentic italian extra-virgin olive oil down the center of the tray, as pictured. Then sit your loaf on top of it and pour another stripe of olive oil over the top. Don’t create a bath, just enough to lightly coat the loaf.

 

8 – There’s nothing like meatloaf & potatoes – and though this part is optional, it’s a good way to get your secondo (second dish) and contorno (side dish) done in a single shot. Dice up your potatoes into medium chunks and line the rest of the tray with them. Coat with olive oil, salt and dried rosemary to taste.

9 – Now pop the whole thing in the pre-heated oven. I couldn’t tell you at what temperature (whenever I ask Mamma Angela she just tells me to put it “al massimo” or at the max temp). Considering that American home appliances tend to exaggerate when it comes to power levels – let’s just say get the oven nice and hot at a temperature you feel comfortable with and keep an eye on your loaf. How will you known when it is ready? The outside will be nice and browned and when you press down on it should feel fairly firm and offer a nice resistance. In any case, it should definitely look like this:

When it’s ready, slice and serve with the potatoes! Yum!

…. Now what about the other half of that meat?

Polpettine – Little Fried Meatballs with a touch of Puglia

Ingredients

Same as above, plus:

Red wine (preferably the one your Italian grandfather or relative makes himself).

Lots more olive oil

Preparation

1 – Follow steps one through 5 as above.

2 – Get out your meat, a cup with some strong red wine and a pile of breadcrumbs. This is your polpettine workstation. Mamma Angela took a big mixing bowl and arranged her ingredients in there. See picture above.

3 – Break up the meat into small pieces and roll them out into balls – balls small enough to fit in the small of the palm of your hand. Insomma, pretty small. Dip each ball into your cup of red wine (a little trick they use in Puglia – says Mamma Angela) and then lightly roll them around in your pile of breadcrumbs. They should look like this (above).

4 – Pour a reasonable amount of olive oil in a pan, if not enough to cover the meatballs entirely, enough to arrive halfway as pictured (though you’ll need to roll them around with a fork or tool of your choice).

Serve When they are really nice and brown and crispy looking, remove them using a fork or a strainer-spoon to catch as little oil as possible and lay them out on some paper towels which will absorb the excess oil. As an appetizer – they are deliziosi!

Prologue

DO NOT put ketchup on this. I did anyway (on the leftovers, when I got home) and Mamma Angela was none too pleased.

That night we served the meatballs together with small oven-warmed bites of bread dipped in fresh ricotta and honey and bites of bread dipped in truffle paté as an appetizer. Il “primo” or first course was linguine with pesto (we can buy great fresh pesto from the supermarket). Then came the polpettone (meatloaf) and potatoes. As if that were not enough, Mamma Angela had secretly prepared some ‘broccoletti’ or a special kind of broccoli from Puglia before I had arrived to help – so we even had a vegetable. It will be a recipe for another day. Not bad for our first cooking lesson!

I bought some ground turkey that I set aside in the freezer in order to try a variation on the recipe at home another day. Stay tuned!