Brajole

In Marie's words, "It's spelled 'brajole' pronounced brashol." Meet Marie. There's much more to her name than that, so I'm just going to leave it at Marie. Heck, there's so much more to Marie than her name, like her cooking. It is Marie's cooking that I am now learning about, after knowing her for about the last 20 years of my life, give or take a few! Marie was up for our party last weekend, and at Bruce's request made Brajole. What a journey of cooking! It was a fun trip to the market with Marie and got most of the photos of the process that I wanted - even scoring my favorite cooking photo ever. With out further ado... here's Marie and her Brajole!
Ingredients
Flank Steak, butterflied
curly parsley, minced
fresh garlic cloves, minced
butchers twine
tomato sauce
bacon, slightly cooked
raisins
parmagiano reggiano cheese
Italian herbed bread crumbs

Process
Basically you use butterflied flank steak, stuff it with various "stuff", roll, tie tightly with twine (don't use cotton twine) and bake fry or cook in oil or gravy aka tomato sauce. (oil cooks faster than the sauce).
Options for "stuff" include grated Parmagiano Reggiano cheese (can use Parm or Romano, any brand will do), minced fresh curly parsley, Italian flavored bread crumbs, minced FRESH garlic (jarred stuff just sucks all the way around), and raisins (these are optional).


And top it with bacon. My family does it the following: slightly undercooked bacon (don't use specialty bacon...just the run of the mill)


This is my favorite picture ever - just look at the shape of her hands and the way the raisins fill the bottom corner of the picture. OK, kill me now, I am loving food photography too much.

We roll it, tie it tight and fry in a frying pan with olive oil on low with lid on part of the time (helps to cook middle without charring the outside).
















Let it cool a bit, carefully snip off twine and slice - not too thin as it will fall apart! A serrated knife works best. Sometimes it helps to slice before you take off the string. This dish takes time, patience and constant supervision.