Please welcome Hank Shaw as he
shares a holiday favorite, flank
steak roulades with pesto and
bacon. ~Elise Roulades, pinwheels,
whatever you call them, this is a
classic party dish. When I was a
boy, my mum used to make these for
our Christmas Eve smorgasbord,
where they took their place
alongside Swedish meatballs and
huge plates of cold cuts, cheeses,
pickles and such. Some years
she’d serve them with Hollandaise
sauce, which made them very, very
rich even for a little kid. Mum’s
version didn’t use pesto. Her
filling was just parsley and garlic
salt. But with those two
ingredients already in the mix,
it’s only a step away from a
full-fledged pesto-especially the
classic winter pesto of parsley and
walnuts. This is not mum’s exact
recipe, but it comes close: Super
tender meat, smoky, fatty bacon and
an intense hit of parsley in the
center. Even though I last ate
these close to 30 years ago, I can
still remember that parsley. It was
so “adult” when I was a kid. My
addition of the pesto, with the
walnuts and cheese, makes my
version as rich as mum’s, only
without the Hollandaise. I do like
a squeeze of lemon on the roulade
right at the table. Making these
roulades isn’t hard, but it
requires a little dexterity to
secure the roulade with the kitchen
twine. Once the roulade is tied,
however, it’s pretty sturdy.
Don’t skimp on the tenderizing
process at the beginning of this
recipe. Flank steak can be very
chewy, so you will want to pound it
well, and a meat mallet’s
tenderizing side is a good
finishing step. If you don’t have
a meat mallet, use the point of a
sharp knife to pierce the meat all
over. You can use prosciutto
instead of the bacon (no need to
cook, it's already cured), or skip
it all together and just do a
roll-up with the pesto of your
choice.
