A Family That Eats Together: Flank Steak Pinwheels

Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog A Family that Eats Together, where she shares meal plans and recipes that will please foodies and children alike. Nicole is also the creator of the new Little Froglet line of children's activewear.

Nicole's meal plan for this week features quick and easy shrimp and green bean stir fry, 3 cup chicken with garlic spinach, rocket pesto with linguni, chicken fried rice, and these flank steak pinwheels.

It seems like premade flank steak pinwheels are the rage at the grocery stores where I live. I have bought them and never really thought that they were all that good. In this recipe, I attempt to make them juicer and tastier than anything you buy pre-made. The result is a fantastic salty-sweet filling that my family gobbled up. My son especially loved the sauce to dip the steak in. I served it with Israeli couscous and an heirloom cherry tomato salad.

Servings: 4–6
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 pound flank steak, butterflied (ask your butcher to do this)
• 12 dried black figs
• 1 bag of washed baby spinach
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 1/8 cup toasted pine nuts
• ¼ cup cubed Fontina cheese
• ¼ cup beef broth or stock
• 1/8 cup Marsala wine
• kosher salt
• freshly ground pepper
• extra virgin olive oil

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
2. Steep figs in 2 cups of hot water for 15 minutes.
3. Sauté spinach, shallot and garlic in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Drain figs and add along with the pine nuts. Turn off heat and add Fontana cheese.
4. Layout the flank steak. Spread the spinach filling out over the entire steak. From one end of the steak, start rolling the steak tightly being careful to keep the filling inside as much as possible. Fasten the end of the steak to the roll with wooden toothpicks. Lightly brush olive oil over the steak and season with salt and pepper, to taste.
5. Wipe out the sauté pan that you used for the filling. Reheat the pan to high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of oil to the pan. When it shimmers, add the steak roll. Brown both sides, turning over the roll after 3-4 minutes. You will be able to easily turn the roll over when it is ready to be flipped. Add broth and wine to the pan, scraping up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Place pan with steak roll into the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and place steak roll on a plate to rest for 10 minutes.
6. While the steak is resting, place pan on the stove over high heat. Reduce the sauce by half.
7. Place the steak roll on a cutting board and slice the roll into pinwheels cutting horizontally across the roll.
8. Plate the pinwheels and drizzle the sauce over top.
9. Serve with couscous.