Nana’s Italian Roulade — The Pounded-and-Rolled Flank Steak

Roy’s mother — whom he calls Nana, whom everyone in Roy’s family has called Nana for forty years, who lives in Tulsa in the same house she and Roy’s father bought in 1968, and whom Mama and I had not yet met — came down with Roy and Aunt Linda Sunday for the introduction lunch before the October fifth wedding. Nana is seventy-eight years old, Sicilian-born in a small town outside Palermo, immigrated in 1948 with her parents and her three siblings at the age of six, raised in a Polish-Italian neighborhood in Pittsburgh, met Roy’s father at a dance in 1962, married him in 1965, moved to Tulsa with him in 1968 when he’d been transferred for work, raised three children including Roy, was widowed in 2007 when Roy’s father died of a heart attack, and has been the Tulsa Italian-grandmother authority figure for her entire family ever since.

Linda had whispered to me Saturday night on the phone that Nana would expect me to have made an actual Italian dish for the introduction lunch — not a Sunday-roast-with-Italian-leanings, not an Italian-American interpretation, but a real Italian dish from a real Italian recipe. Linda had been telling Nana about my cooking for six months, ever since Roy and Linda had started dating seriously, and Nana had been mentally cataloguing what she expected to see at the eventual lunch where she met me. The introduction lunch had become a small-stakes test. I had Saturday night and Sunday morning to prepare for it.

I made Nana’s Italian roulade — or rather, I made an Italian roulade, the technique I’d been wanting to test for months and that I’d researched out of a Marcella Hazan recipe at the library. The roulade, in Italian-American kitchens, is a pounded flank steak stuffed with prosciutto, provolone, fresh basil, and a breadcrumb-pine-nut-and-grated-cheese filling, rolled tight, seared, and braised in tomato sauce until the meat is fork-tender and the filling has melted into the rolled cylinder. The dish is a Sicilian Sunday standard, the kind of thing a grandmother makes for company because it looks impressive on the cutting board when you slice it into pinwheel rounds.

I prepped the dish at the kitchen counter Sunday morning while Roy and Linda and Nana arrived at noon. Nana came directly into the kitchen behind me — no hellos, no small-talk introductions, no please-may-I-watch — pulled out a kitchen chair from the table, sat down at the counter angle, and watched me prep for forty full minutes before she said one word about anything else. Mama and Roy and Linda sat in the living room and made conversation. Nana stayed in the kitchen with me.

She asked technique questions: what kind of flank steak (grass-fed from Bristol Meats in Tulsa); what cut direction was I going to pound (against the grain, fanning out from a butterfly); what was in the breadcrumb filling (toasted breadcrumbs, toasted pine nuts, grated parmesan, fresh parsley, fresh garlic, lemon zest, a beaten egg yolk for binding, salt, pepper, a glug of olive oil); what was the braising liquid (a quick tomato sauce of crushed San Marzanos, garlic, basil, salt). She nodded at every answer. Then, when I started the actual pounding, she stopped me.

“You pound from the center outward,” Nana said in the tone of someone delivering correction without scolding. “In a spiral. Not side to side. The grain wants to relax outward from the middle. If you pound side to side you’ll tear the meat at the edges.” She demonstrated with her own hand on the meat mallet for ten seconds — the spiraling pattern, starting at the visual center of the butterflied steak and working outward in slow expanding circles — and stepped back. I corrected my pattern. The meat thinned more evenly. The edges held without tearing. She nodded once and walked into the living room to sit with Mama, satisfied.

I assembled the roulade: layered the pounded steak with thin slices of prosciutto, then a layer of provolone, then a generous layer of fresh basil leaves, then the breadcrumb-pine-nut filling spread evenly across, leaving a half-inch border at the edges. Rolled tight from the long edge into a cylinder. Tied with kitchen twine at one-inch intervals. Seared deep brown in olive oil in the heavy Dutch oven for two minutes per side. Poured the tomato sauce around (not over) the rolled steak. Lid on, three-fifty oven, two hours.

The roulade came out the way Nana wanted it. The meat was fork-tender, the filling was molten and integrated, the cross-section pinwheels showed clean concentric layers. I sliced into one-inch rounds at the cutting board and plated them on a platter over a pool of the tomato sauce. Nana ate two slices and a piece of crusty bread sopped through the sauce. She told Linda quietly after lunch, while we were in the kitchen washing dishes together, “The girl can cook. I approve. Linda, you may keep her.” Linda hugged me. The wedding is now eight weeks away. I will see Nana again in October.

Pound from the center outward in a spiral. That’s the Sicilian rule. Here’s the roulade.

Nana’s Italian Roulade

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 1 hr 15 min | Total Time: 1 hr 45 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 2 lbs flank steak or thin-cut beef round, pounded to 1/4-inch thickness
• 1/2 lb Italian sausage, casings removed
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs, plain
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and halved lengthwise
• 4 oz thinly sliced prosciutto or deli ham
• 1/2 cup roasted red peppers, drained and patted dry
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
• 1 medium onion, diced
• Kitchen twine for tying

Instructions

1. Make the filling. In a bowl, combine Italian sausage, breadcrumbs, Parmesan, garlic, parsley, oregano, and red pepper flakes. Mix until evenly combined.
2. Prepare the meat. Lay the pounded steak flat on a clean work surface. Season generously with salt and black pepper.
3. Layer the roulade. Spread the sausage filling evenly over the surface of the meat, leaving a 1-inch border at the edges. Layer the prosciutto over the filling, then the roasted red peppers. Arrange the hard-boiled egg halves end-to-end down the center of the meat.
4. Roll and tie. Starting from one long side, roll the meat tightly around the filling, enclosing the eggs in the center. Tie the roll at 2-inch intervals with kitchen twine to hold its shape. Tuck in any loose ends.
5. Sear the roll. Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven or oven-safe pot over medium-high heat. Sear the roulade on all sides until deep golden brown, about 8–10 minutes total. Transfer to a plate.
6. Build the sauce. In the same pot, sauté the diced onion over medium heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Add red wine and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom. Stir in the crushed tomatoes and bring to a simmer.
7. Braise. Return the roulade to the pot, nestling it into the sauce. Cover and cook in a 325°F oven for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, until the meat is tender and cooked through.
8. Rest and slice. Transfer the roulade to a cutting board and let rest 10 minutes. Remove twine, then slice into 1-inch rounds. Arrange on a platter and spoon the braising sauce generously over the top.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 420 | Protein: 38g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 12g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 740mg