BRAISED MEAT ROLL

(Farsumagru or Braciolone)

Serves 8 to 10

1 slice beef weighing

1.25 kg/2¼ lb

125 g/4 oz minced beef

1 egg

65 g/2½ oz grated pecorino or caciocavallo cheese

125 g/4 oz baby peas (fresh or frozen), blanched in boiling water for 1 minute

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

50 g/2 oz fresh pork fat

50 g/2 oz fresh caciocavallo cheese

2 to 4 eggs, hard-boiled

2 spring onions or 1 small red onion

6 sprigs parsley

4 very thin slices of mortadella or cooked ham

1 tablespoon olive oil

25 g/1 oz lard

225 ml/8 fl oz red wine

2 tablespoons tomato extract or 3 tablespoons tomato purée

1 bay leaf

Water

To make a farsumagru, my butcher gives me the tasca, a large, flat muscle known as the “pocket” because it comes from just where their front pockets would be if cattle wore blue jeans. (A flank steak is probably the closest equivalent, but any large, thick slice from the rump or round would do.)

He cuts it almost in half and opens it like a book so that I have a slice about 25 × 35 cm/10 × 14 inches and about 12 mm/½ inch thick, which is what you’re aiming for, wherever you get it from. It should be well pounded, but not to the point of making holes in it.

In a small bowl blend the minced beef, egg, grated cheese, peas, and some salt and pepper.

Cut both the fresh pork fat and the caciocavallo cheese into long, thin strips.

Shell the hard-boiled eggs and cut off the ends up to the yolks.

Trim the spring onions, leaving them whole, or cut the red onion into thin wedges. Trim off the toughest parts from the parsley sprigs.

Line up all the foregoing on your workspace, and have a ball of white kitchen string at hand. Spread out the slice of beef, wider side toward you, and cover it with the slices of mortadella, leaving a 2.5 cm/1 inch margin showing all around the edge. Spread the half of the mortadella that is nearest to you with the minced-beef mixture. Line up the eggs end to end on the minced beef (the idea being to arrange them so that the yolk will “shine” in every slice). In rows parallel to the eggs line up the onions, parsley, strips of pork fat, and strips of cheese. Sprinkle it all with a pinch of salt.

Enrol an extra pair of hands if there is one available (it is by no means impossible to do this alone, but it is more difficult), and begin rolling up the meat, rolling away from you so that the half with the minced beef and all the other ingredients is at the centre, and the outmost layer is plain beef and mortadella. It should be rolled up quite tight, but not so tight that things start oozing out the ends.

Make a slipknot in the free end of your ball of string, pass it around one end of the rolled meat, pull tight, and then wrap the rest of the roll up tightly, passing the string a few times lengthways around the roll as well. It is better to be liberal with your string than to lose your stuffing.

Heat the oil and the lard in a heavy casserole big enough to accommodate the rolled meat, and brown the meat on all sides. Then pour the wine over it. Reduce the wine, then add the tomato extract, stirring until it dissolves. Add the bay leaf and enough water to cover about three-quarters of the rolled meat. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for about 1 hour. Turn the meat occasionally.

When the meat is cooked, remove it from the pan and allow it to cool for 20 minutes. Remove the string and place the meat on a platter. Cut into slices, arranging the slices so the filling shows. Remove the bay leaf from the sauce, correct the seasoning, heat the sauce, and pass it together with the sliced meat.

Note: Farsumagru is also more prosaically known as braciolone, especially when executed in smaller rolls, each one an individual serving.

The Epiphany feast ended with sfinci, a fried sweet that is incredibly rich and heavy, and schiumone, which was probably a frozen dessert. By the time the young scholars had topped all this off with pastries, cordials, and coffee, they must have found it extremely difficult to stagger as far as the chapel for Vespers.

For an island as rich in fish as Sicily, even the rigors of Lenten fasting were no great problem, although degree and rank were important here as elsewhere in Sicilian life.

Good Friday was a day of strict fasting: no butter, milk, or eggs, but only food cooked in water or in oil. Fortunately the young were dispensed from this harsh regime. Papà had informed us of the fact that, since our ancestors had fought against the Moors in Spain, we were exempt from respecting the fast except on Good Friday and Ash Wednesday, and that we had the right to hang a golden cauldron above our coat of arms. Mamma, either out of a spirit of contradiction or because she really believed it, had decided that it would have been vulgar to take advantage of such a privilege, and so we fasted like any proletarian family would.

Fulco, Estati felici: un infanzia in Sicilia, 1977

Like the blancmange, most dishes come in two versions: grasso or fat, i. e., with meat; and magro—lean or meatless. Self-denial seems to have been very much a letter-of-the-law affair, to judge by the pasticcio di magro, a Lenten version of the pasticcio di sostanza that was filled with baby codfish, prawns, squid, clams, anchovies, cauliflower, and artichokes, and flavoured with capers, raisins, and olives.

It is even harder to reconcile one’s idea of fasting with riso nero, the Holy Week treat for the boys at San Michele. Said to be of Spanish origin, this dessert is now made in honour of the feast of the Black Madonna of Tindari, whose shrine on the north-western coast of Sicily preserves a much-venerated Byzantine icon. In my opinion, what this pudding proves is that boarding-school fare is universally dismal, but I include the recipe for the curious.