Christopher Licht grew up on braciole di manzo. The Piccolo Italian Restaurant owner/chef’s Sicilian-born maternal grandmother prepared “roll of beef” — thin slices of beef top round rolled with a mixture of pecorino Romano, fresh herbs and garlic, then braised in a tomato-mushroom sauce and served over spaghetti — as a special treat for birthdays and holidays. Braciole di manzo, made from scratch daily using his grandmother’s recipe, has become one of Piccolo’s signature dishes since it landed on the menu last year.
“If it goes out in the dining room to one table and somebody sees it, it’s like, ‘Ooh, that looks good. What’s that?’” Licht relates. “The next five tickets will have 10 orders of braciole on them.”
The beef top round. Licht explains that the cut is ideal for braising, becoming more tender as it cooks. “There’s a good amount of marbling in it,” he says. “So, the meat itself is flavorful. And then as it braises, those juices get into the sauce and flavor the sauce.”
The pecorino Romano. Licht notes that the cheese has a sharpness that “stands up” in the sauce and flavors the beef. “We don’t salt the beef at all,” he says. “The cheese does the seasoning.”
The parsley and basil. Just-picked herbs “balance out the sharpness of the pecorino with a little bit of freshness,”
Licht says.
The garlic. The recipe calls for just enough of a finely chopped fresh clove to add another dimension of flavor. “The mistake that most people make in cooking, especially Italian food, is they think if there’s garlic in the dish, it’s supposed to taste like garlic,” Licht observes. “Absolutely wrong. You’re supposed to taste a hint of garlic. It shouldn’t be overpowering the other flavors.”
The Spanish onions. “One of the bases of Italian sauces, usually, is onions and garlic” — in this case, sautéed together, Licht says. Spanish onions “have got a nice sweetness to them when they cook.”
The Madeira wine. Its sweetness counters the acidity of the tomatoes in the sauce. “Everything’s got to be balanced out,” Licht declares. “That’s how you get that smooth flavor.”
The San Marzano tomatoes.
Licht favors this variety of imported Italian plum for its flavor. “The acidity [in] the tomatoes [is] going to help break down the meat, to make it tender,” he says.
The mushrooms. Dried porcini mushrooms ground to a dust “add a real rich flavor, woodsy almost,” Licht says.
A mix of fresh cremini, shitake, baby portobello, oyster and button mushrooms “bring some texture to the dish at
the end.”
1261 SOM Center Road, Mayfield Heights, 440-646-1383, piccolomayfield.com
