Every family has traditions. Mine is no exception. There are traditional festivals, traditional clothing, and for my family, there is a traditional food. At Christmastime, someone (usually me) makes a dish from the "Old Country" (Italy) that we all love. The problem is we don't know how to spell the delicacy, we do know how to make it and eat it. We call it Sauce-a-Sedi, which is close to what my grandmother used to call it when we were all little kids. I've searched recipe books for years, trying to discover what the concoction is "really called" and the best I can find is "veal bird." Somehow, that is not quite as romantic as Sauce-a-Sedi. In simple words, it's a stuffed meat roll that is absolutely delicious!
I remember my grandmother showing me how to make Sauce-a-Sedi. She did not have measurements for any of the ingredients...she put everything in the palm of her hand and weighed it out by how it felt. One Christmas, she took my little hand, and put in the ingredients one at a time. This is how much parsley you use, how much oregano, how much thyme, rosemary, salt, pepper. She carefully put each item in my tiny palm and told me to feel it, smell it, touch it, so I knew how much was needed. It's funny, I can still hear her telling me the recipe.
These spices were put in a couple of cups of breadcrumbs. Then a half dozen hard boiled eggs were chopped ever so finely and added to the breadcrumbs. Several cloves of garlic were minced and added to the bowl. Then came the hard job...mincing two onions till they were teeny-tiny. She said they did not want to be seen, so you can guess how tiny that is. Added to the fact that onions make you cry when you chop them, this was the part of the recipe I did not like. Finally came the cheese. I don't think there is an Italian recipe without cheese. She would grate up a piece of Romano making a small mountain of white flakes and add that to the breadcrumbs. With her hands, she would mix the ingredients until they were just holding together. If more moisture was needed, she would dribble some olive oil into the mix to get the right consistency.
Now that the stuffing was made, the next step was to get the meat ready. She had huge pieces of round steak that were 1/4 inch thick. She would pound them until they were even thinner. Not quite as thin as a piece of paper, but pretty close.
The last item to get ready was the string. Lots of clean string was needed. She would break the string into 8-10 inch lengths and have them ready.
Finally it was time to put it altogether. She would lay out a piece of the thin round steak, cover it with three or 4 fistfuls of the breadcrumb mixture, (see how the breadcrumb mixture sticks together) and spread it out to the edges. The next step was to
roll the meat and breadcrumb mixture into a roll or log. The log was then tied together and it was carefully browned, then put in a pot of gently bubbling red tomato sauce where it would cook on low heat for about four hours. All during that time, she would look at the pot making sure it was bubbling just a little bit, but not too much and dipping in a spoon to make sure the sauce was tasting right. When she thought it was done, she took out the logs and let them set a bit, cut them into one inch slices and serve them with raviolis or another type of pasta. It was heavenly.
Today I just made a batch of Sauce-a-Sedi for the family. I made it pretty much the traditional way. I still do not know the correct measurements for the spices, but I know what they feel like in the palm of my hand. I do not chop the onions anymore. I use granulated onion that come in a bottle. It might not be as "fresh" as the teeny-tiny onions of my grandmother's day, but it's a lot easier on the eyes. The meat has changed over the years. It's difficult to get a HUGE piece of round steak, they just do not seem to exist. Instead I asked the butcher to cut a top round into 1/4 slices and then put it through the tenderizer once. These pieces are pretty thin, but I still hammer on them with my fist to make them a little bit thinner. Sometimes I roll the meat into logs and tie them together with string, sometimes I use toothpicks. If I use toothpicks, I need to remember how many toothpicks I used, so that before I serve them up, I retrieve the same number of toothpicks. It's rather disconcerting to bite into a toothpick when you least expect it. I no longer brown the meat rolls before placing them in the sauce. I've discovered that it is not really needed.
It takes about 2 hours to get everything together. I started this morning at 10 AM and the Sauce-a-Sedi were in the pot at 12 Noon. The yummy meat rolls will cook for about 4 hours, all the time scenting our home with the most amazing aroma. When they are done, they will be part of a delayed Christmas dinner that we are having at my niece's home tomorrow.
The tradition continues, and it's good!
