rags and rocket

*note

I have just spent the last hour on my knees using every towel in the bathroom, my dressing gown and the entire pile of stracci to sop-up the many litres of washing machine water that erupted out of the sink while I was at the market buying Mr Musculo to unblock the U-bend. Of course a mop would have been more effective, but it was out on the balcony and Luca was already jumping in the puddle in the hall. I just grabbed the first things that came to hand, threw them on the wet floor and then shuffled around on my knees feeling punished but also amazed at the dust and objects that had been washed by the tide of grey water from under the furniture. Just when I thought I had sopped up every drop, water, coming from god knows where, filled the cracks in the tiles once again and I spent the next 10 minutes feeling as if I was playing a labyrinthian computer game in which the quicker you sop the faster and cleverer the water becomes. I eventually found the puddle, under the fridge and I killed it. An hour later, as I type, the sink is still blocked and the washing machine full of soaking clothes but the floor is cleaner than it has been for months.

I didn’t intend to write about sopping today, I wanted to talk about a keyhole and small park called the Giardino degli Aranci, the Orange Tree Garden, which is just minutes from our flat but feels like another world, especially in spring when you can smell the garden long before you see it. But damp knees and the smell of damp cloths are mocking thoughts of blossom and ironically stracci make a much more appropriate introduction than oranges for todays recipe .

Straccio which comes from the verb stracciare, to rip, was traditionally a rag cloth made from old clothes or sheets. I have inherited my granny’s and mum’s habit for rags: old  T-shirts for the windows, a silk shirt streaked with rioja for polishing, threadbare cotton sheets ripped into squares for everything else. Today the word straccio is also used for kitchen cloths, particularly the coarse cotton ones for the kitchen floor eight of which are dripping onto the balcony. Straccetti are little rags and so to make straccetti di manzo, you rip very thin pieces of lean beef into rag-like-pieces, rub them with olive oil and the cook them swiftly in a hot pan until they curl and shrink and look even more like old rags, but taste anything but, especially when eaten with rocket – surely the best name for a salad leaf – and curls of parmesan cheese.

Pan-fried beef apart from being, um, beefy, has a salty, unami-ish quality, good parmesan does too, making them a charismatic pair. Lay rags of beef and curls of parmesan on a grass-green weave of peppery rocket leaves – the juices from the meat pan providing dressing – and you have the most ridiculously delicious plateful of food. I love the way the rocket begins like a teenager, offering resistance and kick, but then as the warmth of beef sets in and you muddle everything with your knife and fork, the leaves start co-operating enough to wrap themselves around the rags of beef catching warm curls of cheese as they go. By the time you reach the last few mouthfuls and you are torn in the same way as when reading the last pages of a good book: the greedy gallop to the finish or the rein-in to savour every last bit, the last few leaves should have collapsed into a pile to be scooped up with your fingers.

Ridiculously delicious food and real fast food too which makes it my favorite solo supper after sourdough toast, butter and anchovies. I am also happy to share, I made straccetti di manzo con rughetta e parmigiano for my mum and dad the evening of the day we’d walked up the orange garden. Rags and rocket.

Straccetti di manzo con rughetta e parmigiano – sauteed beef with rocket and parmesan

Obviously there are lots of way to make this, some people dip the rags in flour, others add wine or herbs to the pan. I’ve eaten this dish specked with aged balsamic vinegar which was delicious but didn’t convert me from lemon. The steak needs to be sliced thinly enough to tear – so as thin as carpaccio – something Roman butchers do as a matter of course. If you are buying a thick steak, I have a friend who swears by putting the steak in the freezer and then slicing it when it is frozen to get the required thinness. I still have to try this.

serves 2

• 300 – 400 g lean streak, very thinly sliced. I ask my butcher to do this.
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt
• a bunch of rocket
• parmesan cheese
• wedges of lemon

Tear the steak into smallish pieces ‘rags’ and put them in a bowl. Pour over a couple of tablespoons olive oil, season with salt and pepper, toss well with your hands and leave to sit for 5 minutes. Wash and dry the rocket then divide between two plates.

Warm a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan over a medium/high flame, add the meat and the oily juices from the bowl into the pan and sauté briskly until just coloured but still a little pink in places. Divide the meat between the plates, spooning over any juices, then use a vegetable peeler to pare curls of parmesan over the meat and rocket. Pour over a little more olive oil if you think it need it and serve with a wedge of lemon.

*I pressed publish on this before a final spell check by me and, more importantly, Vincenzo for the Italian…..so sorry to those of you who linked from an E mail, the spelling was comical. I hope it is all sorted now. I need a proofreader. R