Farsumauro (meat-stuffed meat. It’s meatylicious!)

The concept is so simple: use a thin sheet of meat to wrap a filling of one sort or another. Brown, braise, and serve.

I adapted this from a recipe I found in the last Italian cookbook you’ll ever need, Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Like all the recipes I’ve tried from this book, farsumauro rocks.

Don’t miss the contest (next post down). After you enter the contest, meet me below the fold for some meat-stuffed meat.

Marcella’s recipe calls for “approximately 1 1/2 pounds beef braciole, cut either in 1 large slice from the center section of the top or bottom round, 1/2 inch thick, or two smaller slices of the same thickness.” I decided to use something entirely different: flat iron steak, an inexpensive beef shoulder cut (top blade).

You can cook this steak in a cast iron pan, then slice it across the grain. Or you can slice the raw steak across the grain, pound out each slice, and use the mashed steak pieces to make one killer cheese steak sandwich. Here, however, I wanted to mash the entire steak into a nice big sheet. But after pounding on the bastard for five minutes straight, I still had this.

(That’s plastic wrap underneath it. You pound steak between layers of plastic wrap. Got it?) But it mashes out so well when I make cheese steak sandwiches! I guess I couldn’t skip the slicing-across-the-grain step. I made a bunch of cuts through my steak, none of them full-thickness.

And then I pounded the fucker.

This had potential. It’s not quite paper thin, and in fact, it fell apart in a few places. No problem; I was going to roll it up like a jellyroll, so most of the flaws would be hidden in the depth of the farsumauro.

Next, I needed a filling. I combined the following using a fork:

1 lb ground pork
2 medium garlic cloves, crushed
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1 egg
3 tablespoons freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
a good sprinkling of kosher salt
a good grinding of black pepper

I cut the pounded steak in half and then I spread out my filling. (Preheat your oven to 275F.)

I rolled up the puppies, beginning at the narrower end,

and floured all sides.

I melted two tablespoons of butter in a frying pan and added two tablespoons of olive oil. Browned the farsumauro on all sides, then transferred to a Dutch oven.

I chopped up about a dozen brown mushrooms and cooked them in the same oil. Once the shrooms were ready, I deglazed the frying pan with a cup of dry white wine — some Pinot Grigio which had been sitting in my fridge for a month or two. Nothing special. Shrooms and wine, I poured atop the farsumauro, and then I added enough beef stock so that the liquid came up halfway:

I sprinkled salt and pepper over the top of the meat, added some chopped parsley, and brought the whole thing to a simmer. I covered the Dutch oven, transferred it to the 275F oven, and simmered for 45 minutes. Next, I flipped the rolls, and simmered for another 45 minutes. By then, I was too hungry to take another picture, but don’t sweat it: the end result looked a hell of a lot like that last picture.

I transferred one of the rolls to a cutting board and sliced it in 1/2-inch widths. The broth is delicious, and the mushrooms are to die for. Don’t even think of thickening this into a gravy — it’s lovely as it is. I served my meat en meat with Carrie Lofty‘s yeasty buns and peas. Thumbs up all around.

Questions?

D.