Rotolo di Vitello alla Bolognese
Bologna Style Veal Pot Roast filled with spinach and Mortadella
A real Bologna classic, this filled veal roll. The picture is of one very skillfully made by my cooking class guests last week, they did a fine job.Though this can be cooked in the oven, most Italians prefer to pot roast, which makes the roast more moist and tender. The Rotolo is not everyday family food, but a special and spectacular dish for Sundays and holidays, for dinner parties or for the Christmas meal. And yet it is not complicated to make or to cook, as you'll see reading on.
We served it with the first sweet little tomatoes I felt were good enough to buy - finally! It's been a long cold winter so everything is late this year, and I am firm in my refusal to eat out of season or green house tomatoes. What's the point? They are a pale, dull, watery imitation of what tomatoes can be like at their best even today. I bore people with my complaints against today's hybrid varieties, all tough skin and stalk, all identical, lacking both seeds and flavour. I remember as a child that if there was one - just one - ripe tomato in the kitchen you could smell it from the top floor of our three storey house.
Tomatoes were a constant throughout spring and the long summer but were never ever seen in winter even in the southern Mediterranean where I grew up. And they were never stored in the fridge: tomatoes should not be stored in the fridge, they become mealy and lose flavour. The variety we bought is a new one but tasty. The little tomatoes are called "Datterini" or little dates, though they have a slight bumpiness that makes them look more like little peanuts. They were oh-so-sweet, candy sweet. Having tasted one we couldn't resist and snacked on a few as the class unwound. I just cooked them for a few minutes in olive oil with a couple of peeled sliced cloves of green garlic and a grinding of salt. I let the skins burst just a little to make a nice little sauce with the olive oil, and tipped them round the sliced Rotolo on the serving platter. Sometimes things look much better served in good old family style.
The Recipe
The cut of veal my butcher says is best is the "Fesa", numbers 21 and 23 in the diagram here
A flat piece of lean veal or young beef weighing about 500g (just over a pound), 300g (10 and a half ounces) thinly sliced Mortadella di Bologna, 300g fresh uncooked spinach, 1 or 2 eggs, 40g (one and a half ounces) freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, 20g butter, 1 tbsp. olive oil, nutmeg to grate, salt & pepper
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Place the washed spinach leaves in a deep pot with just the water clinging to the leaves, season with salt and steam the vegetable in its own water on low heat for about 5 minutes. Turn leaves over and stir occasionally as water is released and the spinach starts to wilt and soften. Drain and squeeze hard to eliminate any remaining moisture.
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Place in a processor with one of the eggs, the Parmigiano-Reggiano and a quarter of the Mortadella plus very little salt and pepper. Whizz to a fine puree. Add a yolk, or the whole of the second egg *only* if the mixture seems very dry. Season generously with nutmeg.
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Place the piece of veal on a working surface, and gently pound it flat and wide as possible using the bottom of your clenched fist. Line with the sliced Mortadella. The fat in this will help to baste the lean veal.
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Spread the spinach/Mortadella evenly over leaving a wide margin all round. Careful not to put too much on, be prepared to leave some aside rather than over stuffing the roll.
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Roll up the meat in the direction of the grain so that later you will slice across it. Roll pretty tightly. Tie it in several places with kitchen string about 1 cm apart - again tie tightly because the meat will shrink when you brown it.
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Heat 2 tbsp. olive oil with the butter in a deep pan and brown the roll on all sides over moderate heat, about 10 minutes. Add a little stock or water, then cover and leave to simmer about 30 / 35 minutes. During the cooking time turn the roll over occasionally and add stock as needed so it does not dry out but has a little sauce at the end - the "intingolo".
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When cooked, leave to rest 10 minutes, then remove the string and slice along the grooves where the string was..
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Serve the veal pot roast with simply cooked tomatoes or carrots or squash - in other words a vegetable that is not green as you already have one in the filling.
Variation: You can replace the spinach layer with a layer of Frittata, either plain or else a wilted onion or mushroom Frittata.
