In a cooking book I am reading I came across a mention of an Argentinian dish called “matambre“. The person speaking in the book didn’t elaborate other than to say that it was a steak dish.
Years ago I read an essay titled “Argentina on two steaks a day” and since then, I’ve held that countries steak recipes in high esteem. So, I did some digging around and discovered that matambre is a flank steak, butterflied, covered in tasty stuff, and then rolled up and roasted. Yes, please!
I haven’t done a recipe post in forevers so here you go. I’ll tell you now that this was super easy, and super tasty. My preparation is, as far as I can tell, pretty traditional except that I didn’t include hot red pepper flakes in my filling because the kidlets were having some.
I started with a nice 24 ounce flank steak and butterflied it. After rubbing both sides down with nice olive oil, then salting and peppering, I put down a layer of fresh spinach. Always cook your spinach! Most of the nutrients aren’t accessible to your body if the spinach is eaten raw. I hate that I have to explain this to people.
In this photo you can see the shadow of my head. My horrible kitchen has its lights situated so that the lights shine down from over the empty space amidst the U-shape counter. This guarantees that your own body casts a shadow on your work no matter where you stand in my kitchen. Some day I will build out a kitchen and it will not suck in this way. Yes, I know, I could spend $15 and put up some better lights for when I’m photographing, but, uhm, yeah, not going to happen.
Next I sliced some carrots into thin sticks and laid them down a couple of inches apart. In the gaps between carrot sticks I put some hard boiled egg, yellow onion, kalamata olives, garlic, rosemary, thyme, and parboiled potatoes.
After layering on the filling I rolled it up, and tied it with butcher’s twine.
Next came browning it on all sides in a hot cast-iron skillet, and then the whole thing, skillet and all, went into a 400°F oven until it reached an internal temperature of 160°F.
After cooking, I let it rest for 10 minutes and then sliced it and served.
Do yourself a favor and try this. It’s easy, tasty, fun, and fast–30 minutes from start to finish (don’t ever tell me you don’t have time to cook a decent meal). I cooked some corn, made salad dressing, and served a salad while it was cooking.
For salad dressing: 3 parts olive oil (or canola, or whatever you like), 1 part acid (balsamic or other vinegar, lemon juice, whatever), and a spot of mustard (I used Dijon). Shake to emulsify. That 3-1 ratio of oil to acid is the key. Just do that with whatever oils and acids you like and you can’t go wrong. For other basic cooking truths such as this, I highly recommend the book:
