Why Are Beef Olives So Called

Beef Olives

This is always a great dish, time consuming but enjoyable to make, although why they are called Beef "Olives" is unclear, In Germany a similar dish would be called a "Rouladen" meaning "to roll" which seems more appropriate. This recipe could by no means be considered definitive as the stuffing and the manner in which beef olives are prepared can vary from recipe to recipe, this recipe is based on my own experience of making this dish in the industry. I sometimes like to use a forcemeat stuffing with pork, however at the time of making this particular dish I was working in a Halal galley in Malaysia and pork was not available to me.

Ingredients

The Beef

9 kg Topside cut into 50 thin slices

Instructions

Preparing Beef;- Choose a good piece of topside or rump beef and allow to defrost slightly in the fridge overnight. We need for the beef to stay firm so that we can slice it really thin preferably on an electric gravity feed slicer, it is preferable to still have some ice present at the core. Try to achieve large thin slices of beef suitable for filling and rolling.
The alternative if you don't have an electric gravity feed slice is to slice your fully defrosted meat into steaks and bat them out with a meat mallet in-between 2 pieces of oiled cling wrap to a size suitable for filling and rolling.
Make fresh Bread Crumbs by cutting the crusts off a loaf and dicing the bread into cubes. This makes it easier for the robo to chop the bread.
Place the cubes of bread in the robo-coup and whiz for a moment to create course breadcrumbs, don't overdo it.
Fry the finely onions and garlic in a little butter, add the grated carrot and dicedred peppers
Mix all the fried onions and garlic with the breadcrumbs and herbs lightly, don't over mix the stuffing as it will become heavy and dense the stuffing should be slightly crumbly
Rolling the Olives;- This is the simple part, simply lay your slices on beef out and place a suitable amount of your stuffing the size of a regular sausage and roll up your beef
When you roll your olives place them on lightly oiled trays spacing them out as we now want to seal them in a very hot oven at approximately 200C for just long enough to seal the meat
Important point;- once you have had raw meat on your bench you must wash down with soapy water rinse and sanitize with a suitable ph sanitizer. I work at a corner unit so the whole area is washed sanitized while my olives as sealing in the oven.
10 When the olives are sealed transfer them to a deeper gastronome tray, I use a 10 cm deep tray for this, we need a deeper tray so that we can flood the olives with a light brown sauce or demi-glaze
11 The Sauce;- If you have it available Demi Glaze would be preferable, however any brown sauce or gravy would be suitable, what you need is a quite thin light sauce, so whatever sauce you use, thin it down you can adjust the consistency to a coating sauce later. If you use a thick sauce of a coating consistency for the braising the meat will not go tender. Most professional kitchens and galleys have brown sauce readily available. We make 30 Litres of Demi-glaze every 10 to 14 days so we always have a good stock of basic brown sauce on hand. Another point regarding the sauce: depending on what your stuffing is made of will affect how much sauce your stuffing will absorb, a forcemeat stuffing will absorb less sauce ten a stuffing made with just breadcrumbs.
Flood and cover with hot Demi-glaze sauce. I emphasize again that your sauce needs to be quite thin, your sauce will be absorbed by the stuffing during cooking so ensure you have sufficient coverage prior to placing in the oven, your olives need to be totally submerged. If there is insufficient sauce you will end up with dry surface on the top of your beef olives.
Here you can see an example of beef Olives ready for the oven, on this day all the deeper Gastronorrn containers were busy, so here the olives are still showing, but once the trays were place in the oven the gravy was topped up to just barely cover the olives.
Cover with a lid and place in a slow oven at 150ºC for approximately 2 hours, or until tender.
After the cooking time is completed remove the olives from the oven and carefully lift the olives carefully out of the sauce and place into a clean serving dish.
Transfer the remaining sauce to a pot and correct the seasoning and consistency, strain if required. Keep the Beef Olives warm while you check the sauce, and when you are happy with the sauce pour it over the olives, add more Demi-glaze if required.
Garnish with Chopped Parsley.