Food Network’s Dave Lieberman is traveling around the country in search of “real food.” And there’s one dish that comes to mind as being (possibly) a unique New Orleans real food to me: Brociolone. I had never heard of this dish growing up. When I was dating my husband, I did what any self-respecting woman would do who was trying to win her man over–I offered to cook his favorite home-cooked real-food meal. When I asked what that dish was for him, I expected him to say gumbo or pot roast or lasagna. Instead, he said, “Brociolone.” I, having never heard of this dish, was at a loss at how to make it. So my man e-mailed his mother for the recipe. This is what she e-mailed him:

Thin cut round steak
Slice of ham
Italian seasoned bread crumbs
Hard boiled eggs

Cut piece of round steak about as big as your hand. Place a slice of ham (as big) on top. Place about one teaspoon of bread crumbs on top. Place a slice of hard boiled egg on top. Roll all ingredients in steak and wrap string around to hold it all together. (Hint: wrap in one direction a few times, then wrap long way a few times. Leave a long enough string to find the end when unwrapping.) Brown the wrapped bushaloonies [her spelling, not mine], in a tablespoon of olive oil. Place in a large pot with spaghetti sauce (either store bought or make your own). Cook forever, or for about one hour or more. More is better. The more you cook them, the more tender they become. After about an hour, however, you can remove the strings so they are easier to eat. I hope this helps. If not, let me know, and I’ll fly to New Orleans and show you how. Love, Mom

Preparing this dish was a daunting task for me back then. I mean, how can I compete with his mother’s offer to fly down and cook it for him? Further, her recipe leaves a lot of room for interpretation. So I searched the web and my cookbooks for others’ recipes of this dish. And I discovered that this seems to be a New Orleans-Italian dish. I could find few recipes close to this dish (and with spelling it every conceivable way) that did not reign from New Orleans or come from a New Orleans cookbook. Well, that fact just perked my interest and, I persevered on cooking it. Am I glad I did. It is now one of my favorite dishes, too.

I have found it served in only two local restaurants (and never in out-of-state Italian restaurants). The first restaurant did a terrible job with it. But the second restaurant, Venezia’s, does a fantastic job with it. The original Venezia’s is in mid-city and was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina. They just recently reopened. There is also a second location in Jefferson Parish. This is the location we dined at tonight.

Venezia’s does not always serve brociolone (and, sadly, they have not yet served it since Katrina, but I hold out hope). Luckily, their veal parm is really good and their pizza is truly the best in the city. You need to go to New York for better pizza. Seriously.

Over the years, I have modified and tweaked CS’s mother’s recipe. There are some folks who don’t cut the steak into strips (the way I do) but instead make one big roll that they serve on a platter. Some people add pine nuts (I don’t). All respectable recipes call for that bit of hard boiled egg in the middle. One friend call that egg the “surprise in her meat” when she ate it for the first time at our house.

This dish is a labor of love. It takes a good bit of time to prepare and even longer to cook. My mother-in-law did not lie: the longer you cook it, the more tender and tastier it is. You cannot overcook this meat.

If you are having company over and want to knock their socks off with a delicious “home cooked” meal, this is the dish to serve. All that time in the kitchen is not wasted. Your company will feel special indeed for your efforts in preparing this real food dish for them.