Sicily: The Salt Flats in Trapani

Involtini di Manzo: Stuffed Beef Rolls

Judy noted as we traveled around Northwest Sicily, that savory cooking, and notably the cooking in and around Palermo typically features breadcrumbs, pine nuts, and raisins. We saw this everywhere, and the cooking class at the Becchina estate featured one nice recipe featuring this trinity.

The beef used for these rolls is best coming from a young animal. This topic was briefly touched on in the cooking class and it is rather important if you want the fork tender melt in your mouth results we got in Sicily. In France this kind of beef comes from the Genisse, a young heifer that is old enough to have been out with the herd on the field, but not quite full grown. The meat is a darker red than veal, from an animal that has been out on a daily walk moving her limbs, but also a younger animal than we get steaks from. When in doubt, ask your butcher, and if you only have one type of beef or veal to choose from, go for a naturally raised veal that has been kept outside with its mother, walking about. It will have some color to it. If you don't like the idea of using veal because you can't be sure whether it was raised humanely, go ahead and use beef, but make sure you get it sliced thinly. You might discuss this detail with your local butcher or local Italian grandmother and see what he or she might suggest.



The keys to this recipe, aside from the meat, having done it with the teacher in Sicily and then again in rather rustic conditions on the wood stove at home in France, is to make sure you get the right kind of cheese, young Pecorino and also a good Parmesan. You can replace the fresh young Pecorino with Cheddar, if you are in a pinch, but do make sure you get nice good Parmesan.

Involtini di Manzo (Bracioline) from Chez Becchina
(serves 4)

8 extra thin slices of young lean beef : rump steak, boneless and flattened if necessary (ask your butcher to slice it as thin as possible)
4 extra thin slices of mortadella or ham
1 hard boiled egg
1 heaping cup of loosely packed fresh ground breadcrumbs, made from day old (good) bread with the crust removed
1/4 cup chopped Pecorino primo sale (fresh young pecorino)
1/3 cup Parmigiano reggiano or Grana padano cheese
2 Tablespoons pine nuts
2 Tablespoons raisins
1 peeled garlic clove in winter, 2 if fresh with its green stalk
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh flat leafed parsley (don't skip the parsley!)
finely ground Trapani or Mozia sea salt to season, even better: fior di sale. (Lucy's note: Use your best sea salt, including breaking out your fleur de sel if necessary)
2 Tablespoons Olio Verde extra virgin olive oil
Oil for browning (Lucy's note: your favorite cooking oil)
One large jar of your favorite tomato sauce or simply minced whole canned tomatoes
toothpicks (for closing the rolls)



Put the breadcrumbs in a bowl. Mince everything: the eggs, the parsley, the raisins, pine nuts and garlic, cheeses, and add them to the bowl. Toss, season with salt, then add the olive oil in a stream, tossing the mix to keep it light and fluffy. The stuffing should still be light and not drenched with oil, use your discretion with the oil.



Lay out the beef slices on a board, and note the direction of the grain of the meat. This will have an effect on your finished product. The meat contracts in the process of cooking, and your fresh bread crumbs will expand in the process of simmering, laying the meat this way and rolling it as shown will ensure a compact and durable roll, which does not pull apart and spill the contents during cooking.

Cut your ham or mortadella into pieces that fit within the size of the beef slices. (My thought is that if you are not able to get your hands on the real mortadella from Italy, you can replace it with deli thin slices of bologna or something similar.) And lay a slice on top of the beef as shown. Look how thin this is sliced. Tell the people at the deli you want it that thin.

Spoon 2-3 Tablespoons of the breadcrumb/egg stuffing onto the roll, ensuring that you stay within the edges. You don't need to force these completely full of stuffing. The goal is to get a nice roll that won't fall apart so don't go overboard on the stuffing. A little goes a long way.

Fold in the edges on either side as shown, and roll them up, finishing with a toothpick to hold them together. (repeat for all of the beef rolls.)

Donna did a great job in this class!

In a flat skillet, heat the cooking oil and quickly brown the beef rolls on each side, turning them every 3 minutes or so.

When they are browned, transfer them to a plate and drain off the cooking oil the best you can. In a medium sized pot or deep skillet, heat the tomato sauce and bring it to a simmer. Transfer the beef rolls into the tomato sauce, and simmer them covered for 45 minutes to an hour. Serve hot!

Devotion at the Becchina Estate

The sun made the stones and the earth glow in hot brilliant gold tones all the way though the olive groves. The sky's reflection in the spring fed pond at the house contrasted against the deep red structure in a way that made me understand a truth about color and light. I hung back, I wanted to remember that moment. This kept happening again and again here.



When I ran to catch up, Gabriella Becchina had met the group at the front door. She was extending her welcome. She urged us to make ourselves at home. We were ushered to the kitchen and to the terrace where we washed away that morning's grime from the ruins at Segesta in an enormous stone sink. Her assistant was prepared to guide us through three local dishes, the theme: Olive Oil. Not just any olive oil, but the oil produced right there, a fruity, light tasting flavorful oil they call Olio Verde. Funny little owl on the bottle. Isn't it? I bet it has a story.



There's nothing like discovering a beautiful artisanal product at its source, where you can see for yourself the devotion coming through everywhere, from the working kitchen to the garden to noting the care taken with each and every individual tree as you stroll through the groves. Other fruits are interspersed in between the olive trees, and when we visited, pomegranates swelled ripe, oranges hung like decorations, and prickly pears glowed red. Lemons hung like pendulums, from which Gabriella makes her own gorgeous sweet lemon spread that she sells in little jars for tartines or use in pastry. When I look around, I repeat the word. Devotion. And from this little olive oil production to the care taken in the cooking, I can easily follow its themes.



Gabriella speaks with an interesting lilt in her English, not quite an accent but something that indicates she perhaps speaks many languages, English not being her first. Schooled in Switzerland and then at Columbia University where she earned her PhD in Art History, she came to the family home in Sicily seven years ago with her mind set to archeological restoration on the estate. She was also drawn into the family's activity of oil production, which clearly is her calling.

Gabriella Becchina

Gabriella tells us one of her father's stories, a memory, of a cold November day when her grandfather is taking the family crop of olives to be pressed. Everyone harvested then late in the season, and there was only one press in the town. While all of the local olive producers waited in line for days with their rapidly fermenting olives, her father nestled himself between the sacks of fermenting olives to get warm. They steamed from the fermentation, and produced an unforgettable smell. A child could warm his body that way, and in doing so a lasting image is imprinted that he shares with his daughter. What kind of oil does a fermented olive yield? Heavy, bitter oil with a greasy taste. Ripe black olives will yield more oil, so most olive oil producers choose to harvest late, and this is the way of production that most of us know from our early memories of imported oil.

The white stage, which lasts only 2 weeks each year, and green gold from harvest at the right time.

Today, the Becchina's approach to production is different, with an impeccable eye for flavor and quality. They harvest carefully selected olives green for optimum taste in their olive oil, not maximum yield. They pick the olives still green only by hand during a two week window that Gabriella tells us is the "white stage" of maturity, a time when the olives develop a natural white film on them (reminding me of grapes, plums, and quince), when they are just about to ripen, and long before any kind of fermentation will take place. They press the oil immediately, so that heavy greasy bitter flavor never comes into the oil at all.



Early harvest and immediate pressing makes this the lightest, purest, most beautifully flavored oil. The Becchinas don't use raking tools or shaking to remove the olives from the trees, which would damage the fruit and cause it to ferment. All of their olives are hand picked, and the process of removing the leaves is labor intensive, something that not all olive oil producers do. While the leaves add a green color to fermented oil, they add an acrid tone to the flavor from the added chlorophyll. The Becchinas carefully pick them out for a better flavor. The green color of the Becchina family oil comes from the unfermented olives themselves. They do not filter the oil, simply letting it settle before bottling. Devotion, and attention to detail. This is what makes this oil, this process, unique. Ingredients for success, wouldn't you agree?

Take note of the backsplash tiles. They will be coming up again.

The cooking class entailed preparation of three dishes, all of which featured the house olive oil. We did stuffed beef rolls, or involtini di manzo, Becchina's family recipe for a pesto verde, a fresh basil pesto featuring almonds which had been previously peeled and fried in the house olive oil.



Finally we did a citrus flavored olive oil cake using the house olive oil. All were delicious and we enjoyed a wonderful meal.

Next post you get the recipe for involtini di manzo using this oil with a step by step.

The Becchina family estate has rooms where people can stay at the olive plantation, with room and board, meals consisting of products from their farm and groves. They also have a place at the beach with rooms available. I don't know how much it costs, but you can contact them to find out. Their oil is shipped fresh off the press to a number of locations in North America, Europe, and Asia. Watch for it! Check their website to find out where you can buy Olio Verde. Thank you Judy, for taking us on this journey. I will remember it always. Coming up next, details on the beef rolls!

Postcard: Segesta, Sicily

Shangai Trattoria, Palermo

The Shanghai Trattoria got a very romantic write up in the New York Times, and the reality was not anything like what I was expecting from the writeup. After reading about this haven for artists and poets, I wanted to go there, and made a special request to try it. The "eclectic furnishings" mentioned in the article were actually white plastic lawn chairs and tables, and the place was lit by stark flourescent rods. It's a little hole in the wall, with sparsely adorned and simply cooked fresh fish at not so cheap prices. Not much ambiance whatsoever. I certainly didn't have any problems with the freshness of the fish. If my father were alive today, he would have gotten a kick out of eating there, because it was kind of an adventure. But there were problems with timing, long waits, lack of cutlery and the waitstaff was slow to respond on the night we went. The publicity that painted the place in broad rosy tones must be the reason why almost every table was filled with Anglophones. I certainly enjoyed the company at my table, and I was happy to have the chance to take a photo of the market at night from that vantage point. We all know location is everything. I would not go so far as to say avoid the place. Just adjust your expectations, and know that Palermo restaurant dining can have much better ambiance and service in so many little neighborhood trattorias.

Lunch might be better?

Sicily: Monreale

After our walking tour of the churches in Palermo, we took an afternoon trip to the town of Monreale, up in the hills about 8 miles outside the city. Our plan was to visit the vast Norman Romanesque cathedral there. We stopped to enjoy the view, overlooking the valley that was once orchards orange, almond, and olive groves, leading down to the sea. There is a custom there, at this particular vista point, for lovers to go there together and make a love pact, sealing it with padlocks. On the locks, they will write messages or maybe their names. The guide informed us that they have prohibited this activity due to the massive profusion of locks that ended up having to be removed. But people still do it. I looked out over the valley out to the sea and took in the thoughts that were swirling in my head about how these people find and use symbol as a beautiful compliment to the special moments in their lives.



The cathedral at Monreale was built also in the 12th century, and is like an unfolding and expansion of the Palatine Chapel, with elaborations of the themes we saw in the first church. There is a difference in the stylism of the figures in the vast collection of Byzantine mosaics there. In this cathedral dedicated to the Madonna, the church is oriented in such a way that on the day of Christ's birth a beam of light shines on an iconic mosaic of her every year at the same time. We observed the same celebration of light as in the Palatine Chapel, with reflective surfaces and glass mosaic work stacked everywhere.



We were lucky to arrive to the church a day in which they opened the enormous set of bronze doors dating to 1179, an event that rarely ever happens. Our guide was very funny in her condemnation of the people who pay to use the church for their weddings, "for show", she said. I didn't mind at all! In fact I was so thankful to have a chance not only to have the doors open illuminating the church in all of its grandeur during our visit, but also to see the relief from the shadow of the open door. It was magical.



Then, as if in a dream, the organ began to play and we stepped back. A proud Sicilian father walked his daughter into the church to the cacophany of Mendelssohn's midsummer night's dream wedding march blaring from the cathedral's organ. The spaces are so enormous and round in this cathedral that the sound was almost surreal. The wedding party and guests were all dressed in black, as is the way in Sicily.



Since the church is a national monument, it must remain open to the public even during weddings, and the tourists milled around and through the the outer chapels admiring the mosaics as the wedding took place. I felt it would be better to go outside and let the wedding take place undisturbed. We accidentally happened upon the best part anyway. It could not have unfolded more perfectly. Outside, trading of saints cards took place outside and I found a simple ceramic cross with an idea of where I plan to put it in the country house, where it will remind me of that perfect day and all of the beauty of the churches in Sicily.



Next Stop: Dinner at Shanghai Trattoria.