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Italian Recipes

Italian Recipes Steak Recipes

Chef Jim’s Delicious Braciole

Chef Jim Gray prepares a delicious braciole, an italian dish consisting of savory thin slices of steak rolled around a spinach parmesean mixture and simmered in a rich tomato sauce.

Kitchen Guy’s Braciole Recipe
Recipe adapted from Chef Sandy Hall

Ingredients
1 large bunch baby spinach
1 1/2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. olive oil
6 medium garlic cloves crushed and chopped
3/4 cup panko (Japanese-style) breadcrumbs
2 pinches red pepper flakes
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1 cup dry red wine
1 28 oz. can or jar of tomato sauce
1 1/2 lbs. sirloin steaks pounded thin enough to roll

Preheat oven to 400. Sauté the spinach in the olive oil until the spinach wilts. Add garlic, salt and pepper to taste and sauté a bit longer until the spinach is completely softened. Add balsamic vinegar and simmer for about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat to cool.

Mix in breadcrumbs, red pepper flakes, toasted pine nuts and Parmesan. Pound the beef between two sheets of plastic wrap until it is about 1/4 inch thick and elongated. Remove plastic wrap and lightly salt and pepper the meat. Put a generous heap of the filling in the center of the meat, lift the end closest to you over the filling and roll, sealing with toothpicks or tieing with butcher’s twine. Drizzle olive oil in a glass baking dish and lay the meat rolls in a single layer. Pour wine until it comes about halfway up the sizes of the meat. Spoon tomato sauce over the top, covering completely.
Tightly cover the dish with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 250 degrees and continue braising for 4 hours.

Italian Recipes Seafood Recipes

Sicilian Caponata with Seared Tuna Steak with Chef Matteo Carboni

Chef Matteo Carboni from the Academia Barilla Culinary School shows us in this video recipe how to make a Sicilian dish, Caponata, which he pairs with a seared tuna steak.

Caponata is a Southern Italian traditional recipe, a typical side dish in Sicilian cuisine. The main ingredients are eggplants, bell peppers, onions, and zucchini, cooked with mint, garlic, capers, pine nuts, white vinegar, pistachios, dried sultanas, sugar and vinegar.

In a frying pan Chef Carboni pours a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, and sautes the red onion first, then red pepper, and at last, the zucchini.

After a 3 or 4 minutes minutes we can add the other ingredients: capers, sultanas, pine nuts, sugar, white vinegar, pistachios, and the deep fried eggplant. Once the Caponata is ready, Chef Carboni puts it at rest in a warm place, and moves on to the Tuna steak.

The tuna steak should be at least 1 inch thick to be correctly seared, advices Chef Carboni.
In a frying pan Chef Carboni puts some Italian extra virgin olive oil, crushed garlic (to be removed later) and sears the tuna steak with 1 minute cooking time per side approx. When the tuna steak is seared, it can be served as a whole steak, or cut into slices, as in Chef Carboni’s serving suggestion.
Chef Matteo Carboni suggests to use a tin stamp to serve the caponata on the side of the dish, while serving the sliced seared tuna steak on the other side, not before giving a final touch with extra virgin olive oil, natural sea salt, and freshly ground pepper. As a final presentation touch, Chef Matteo adds deep fried basil leaves. Yum.

For more Italian food recipes visit Academia Barilla’s Italian Food Lovers blog.

Sicilian Caponata with Seared Tuna Steak
Servings 4
Chef Matteo Carboni

Ingredients

1 lb tuna
3 ½ oz onion
3 ½ oz eggplant
3 ½ oz zucchini
3 ½ oz red pepper
1 oz raisins
1 oz pine nuts
1 oz pistachios
1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
1 oz sugar
1 clove of garlic
1 pinch salt
black pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil to taste

Prepare as above.