Making Pastirma at home - plus recipe

I'm intrigued by stories of food from the Old Country.  Traditional recipes that combine preservation and deliciousness are always up my alley.

A friend of mine from Lebanon was telling me about this cured meat he knew as a youth.  Back in the old country, it was made from goat or mutton, coated with a spicy paste, and dried for ages before enjoying as a breakfast meat of all things.  In North America it's easier to get beef, so when I saw an Eye of Round Roast on sale, I picked it up and set to work.

Pastirma has several different names depending on the region, and different variation on the spice mix.  But what they do all seem to share in common are that the meat is pressed and the spice mix includes fenugreek and garlic.  Legend has it that in past days nomadic tribes would press the meat between the thy and the horse as they road along.  The salt from horse and rider sweat would help cure the meat, then it would be coated in spice and hung from the saddle as they road from place to place - how much of this is true, I don't know (I wasn't there).

Pastirma is also the ancestor of several different cured meats.  You can see how it travels West across Europe   There is Bresaola, and even Pastrami and Corned Beef are very similar to this style.  Interesting how more sedentary cultures use a brine cure, where as more mobile cultures use a dry cure.  If I was still an anthropology student, I would write a paper on this.

The modern method does not require a horse.  After much questioning of my friend and research (both in books online) I found two recipes for pastirma that I liked best: Middle East and Africa Cooking & Baking recipe for Basturma and TheArmenianKitchen.com Homemade Basterma.  I ended up combining Folklore with these two recipes.

I adore how this turned out and can easily see why it is so popular in the middle east.  I just want to gobble it all down, but it's so rich that only a few shaved slices is enough for me.  I can also see why it's so expensive to buy in the shops; it took over 5 weeks to make.  If I had a better set up for curing my meat, I think I could have done a better job, but even with my limited resources  it makes a very friendly start to dry curing meat.  It's also very forgiving about timing, humidity, temperature, &c.... which in my opinion are the best qualities of any long-term, farmhouse, homemade, foodstuff.


You can use any lean cut of red meat: lamb, goat, horse (if you are into that kind of thing), moose, dear, antelope, beef, or well, just about anything.  My understanding is that the better quality the meat, the better the finished product, so for my next go at this recipe I'll be using some goat that was raised on this farm.  Then again, it turned out this good with some commercial feed lot beef, so I can't imagine how good it will be with some real meat!

My Pastrima Experience

About 4lb meat (I used eye of round cut in half lengthwise)  no more than two inches thick.

eye of round

less than 1 cup kosher salt

• Trim as much fat and silverskin as you can from the meat, slice it in half longwise if it's more than 2 inches thick, and rub the salt into the meat.  Put into a ziplock bag, remove the air from the bag the best you can, and leave in the fridge for 4 to 6 days.  It will be firm to the touch when it's ready.
• Rinse off and soak in cool water for 1 to 3 hours.  Rinse and dry before moving onto the next step.
• Wrap the meat in cheesecloth and press.  I used an old crock and some boards and rocks (bleached with H2O2, both before and after).  Press in the fridge for about 2 days.

getting ready to press the meat

meat wrapped in cheese cloth and a board for pressing.

pressing the meat in the fridge

• Take some kitchen or butcher twine and place in boiling water to sterilize.  A darning needle too.
• Thread the string through the narrow end of the meat, tie in a loop so you can hang the meat by this.
• Unwrap the meat, and wrap again in clean cheesecloth. Hang for 10 days for 2 weeks (I hung in the fridge, but anything below about 10 degrees C should be fine if you salted it enough in the first step.

hanging in the fridge

meat after hanging in the fridge

spices ready to mix

• Prepare the spice mix.  I used:

1/3 cup Paprika

1/4 cup Fenugreek

1 Tbs Alspice

1 Tbs Black Pepper Corns

1 Tbs Cumin Seeds

1 tsp Cayanne

1 Bud (not clove, the entire bud) of Garlic

1 Tbs salt

about 1/2 to 1 cup cool water

• I ground any spices that needed grinding, then mixed in the cool water a little at a time to make a thick paste.
• I unwrapped the meat and carefully coated it with the spice mix.  It smelled amazing!  I was very careful to get every bit of surface area covered, it took a while.



at first I hung it near the hearth,
then I remembered fire makes heat,
so I moved it to the cupboard

• Hang to dry somewhere out of the way.  Ideal would be about 60 degrees F, and moderately humid.  Ours was decidedly less humid and warmer (but don't tell the experts, it still turned out amazing).

freshly sauced meat

• The spices are mega bug repellents so don't worry about that.  But you probably want to avoid somewhere with drastic changes of temperature or too much sunlight.  After the outer coating started to dry, my final hanging place was in the bottom of the pantry, next to the sauerkraut.
• Hang for 2 weeks.
• If there is black or fuzzy mould, worry.  Or if it smells rotten, then you worry. Otherwise, so long as you didn't skimp in the salt on the first step, then there shouldn't be any reason to worry.
• When the time is up, grab a beer, have a party, and enjoy your Pastirma (ps, beer intensifies the spicy flavour, not calms it like with a curry).

Lunch!

If you get that far, you can see why it's traditionally shaved off with a hatchet.  It's very firm and the knife needs to be very sharp and strong to slice into it.

Shave thinly as you intend to eat it.  Don't cut up too much before hand because it won't keep as long.  You can store at room temperature in a pinch, but it will continue to dry out, so best to wrap in some butcher paper and put in the fridge.

I'm very impressed how delicious this is.  I'm going back for seconds now, and I might try putting some in a pasta dish tonight for dinner.

Affordable Cooking: It cost me $15 for the meat, another $3 for the spices and salt (probably less) so that's $18 for 2.5lb.  A brief look at the internet says that it runs about $20 a pound to buy ready made Pastirma (plus shipping), but I haven't found any sellers that will ship to Canada, so I think you would have to find a speciality shop for that.  I think there's one fellow in Vancouver that makes it on a large scale, but you have to be a friend to buy it off him.  So to buy this much Pastirma retail, it would be at least $45 plus shipping.... I'm happy with how little it cost me and (provided I can get the meat for a good price) will make this again.


Cooking with Allergies:  This is pretty good.  You can choose the meat and to some extent modify the spices (just be sure to keep the salt, fenugreek and garlic the same) and it does not contain nitrites/nitrates which can cause a reaction in some people.  However, it does have a high salt content.  It needs it to kill off the evil bacteria, so if you are on a low salt diet, only have one or two slices.  The current recommendation is that you have no more than one ounce of cured meat a day, so it's a good aim to um,. well to aim for.

2 recipes: hot cross buns and sourdough hot cross buns

Earlier I talked about how to convert a regular yeast bread recipe to a sourdough recipe.  Although the theory is pretty straight forward, I've always felt rather intimidated by the idea of trying it.

Finally, my desire for sourdough hot cross buns overcame my fear of failure, and I set to work converting an old favourite recipe from commercial yeast to sourdough.

This first recipe come from one of my all time favourite bread (and cake books) Homemade Bread by the Food Editors of Farm Journal   It's out of print now, but if you ever see a copy at a second hand bookshop or yard sale, snatch it up.  Not only is it full of yummy bread recipes, the decidedly sexiest attitude is always good for a laugh.

Hot Cross Buns

Easter Buns with frosting crosses - traditionally served on Good Friday

1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup sugar
2/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
2 pkgs. active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
3 eggs
4 cups sifted all-purpose flour (about)
3/4 cup currants
1 egg white
1 tsp cold water
white frosting (recipe below)

• Scald milk,add sugar, salt and shortening; cool to luke warm.
• Sprinkle yeast on warm water; stir to dissolve.
• Add eggs, yeast and 1c flour to milk mixture; beat with electric mixer at medium speed about 2 minutes, occasionally scraping the bowl.  Stir in currants and enough remaining flour, a little at a time, to make a soft dough that is easy to handle.  Beat well.  Place in lightly greased bowl' turn dough over to grease top.  Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1.5 hours.  Punch down.  Turn onto lightly floured board.
• Roll or pat to 1/2" thickness.  Cut in rounds with 2.5" bisket cutter; shape cutouts in buns.  Place about 1.5" apart on greased baking sheets.  Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
• With a very sharp knife, cut a shallow cross on top of each bun.  Brush tops wit unbeaten egg white mixed with cold water.
• Bake in moderate oven (375F) 15 minutes  or until golden brown.  Cool on wire racks about 5 minutes.  Then with tip of knife or teaspoon, fill in the crosses on buns with White Frosting.  Best served Warm.  Makes about 18 buns.

White Frosting: Combine 1c. sifted confectioners sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla and 2 Tbs hot water.  Mix until smooth.

Now, the above recipe makes a decent hot cross bun, but I do usually add spices and candied peal to it.  I also find it a wee bit sweet for my taste, particularly the frosting.

This next recipe takes a long time to make, but it's so worth it.  I recommend making the sponge in the morning, the first part of the dough late in the evening, leaving it to rise overnight, then shape and do the second rise in the morning.  The buns should be ready for late afternoon on the second day.  Doing the second rise overnight ends up drying out the surface of the buns before they go in the oven which makes them hard to cut.

It's also very difficult to photograph these hot cross buns.  By the time I have the props and camera ready, the buns are all eaten.  Three days of baking from dawn till 3am the next day and I finally learned to hide the buns while they cool so that they didn't get snatched up.  (I did a lot of test batches and testing, so I'm confident they are fantastic).

Sourdough Hot Cross Buns

A word about Sponge.  Although the word sponge can mean different things in various parts of the word, I use it here to mean a fairly active runny batter like substance made of sourdough starter, flour and water.  Make the sponge at least 4 hours before you plan to begin the bread.  I usually make mine the night before.  Mix at least 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup water (or more) and at least 1/8th cup sourdough starter.  Mix them well to make a runny batter, and leave in a warm corrner of the kitchen, covered with a cotton or linen towel.  After a few hours, depending on your temperature, the weather, whatnot, it should be bubbling.  You know the yeast is active in it.  If you leave it more than 24 hours, you need to feed it again.

1/4 cup sourdough sponge
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup honey/maple syrup/or other sweet liquid (I use the juice the fruit is candied in if there is any left over)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter/lard/or other fat (butter is best)
3 eggs
less than 4 cups flour (your choice but I recommend the first cup be all purpose or bread flour).
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup candied ginger (optional)
1/2 cup other dried or candied fruit or peal
pinch each nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves

• Scald milk, add honey, salt, butter.  cool to luke warm.
• In a big bowl, add eggs, sponge, 1 cup of flour, and milk mixture.  Mix a lot.  What you are trying to do here is to blend everything and activate the gluten in the flour.  It takes about 5 to 6 minutes to mix this by hand.  I do it in 2 min sessions, with a min or two rest in between.  Wooden spoon is my favourite tool for this.  Alternately, you could mix in electric mixer for 2 min.
• Add spices, and fruit, mix some more.
• Mix in the flour a little at a time until a soft dough forms.  Should be barely firm enough for you to handle.
• Place in a lightly greased bowl, grease the top of the dough, and cover with a linen or cotton towel.  Rise until double in size.  Even with a very active sourdough starter, THIS TAKES A LONG TIME SO YOU MIGHT WANT TO DO THIS OVERNIGHT.
• Punch down and break off egg sized balls of dough.  Form into bun shapes and place in a lightly greased tray or baking pan.  Cover and raise till double in size.
• Carefully cut the cross in the top with a VERY sharp knife.  Optional:brush with egg white mixed with 1 Tbs of cold water.
• Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 to 25 min.  

I'm not bothering with the egg wash (I don't like egg whites much, especially with bread) or frosting, but feel free to do it if you like.

Ideas for fruit to put in them: dried currents, dried cherries  dried raisins  dried peal, freshly grated organic citrus peal, candied peal, dried pineapples, dried anything... make sure you pit and chop up anything bigger than a raison.  My favourite is to get the chunky runny marmalade they have in Europe and strain off the juices (use this instead of honey) and the chunks of orange as the fruit for the bun.

Healthy: well, um.  I don't recommend  eating as many as I have this week.  But hey it's only once a year and when compared with commercial made hot cross buns full of highly processed ingredients and florescent coloured lemon peal like substance, YES they are much healthier.

Affordable:  I have no idea.  I don't even want to price these out, they are so delicious.  They do however help use up the left over dried fruit you have in the back of the cupboard... that's got to count for something I suppose.

These are NOT suitable to serve to your Vegan Friends because of the egg, honey, butter, &c.  See this vegan friendly recipe for hot cross buns.

Allergies: This is fairly easy to modify for allergies.  I don't recomend cutting down on eggs and butter though, it is what makes the dish.  If these are the things you are allergic to, then please make the vegain version I just linked to in the last paragraph.

 

Converting a normal bread recipe to sourdough

First stage, to write out a recipe based on the
original hot cross bun recipe, yet incorporates sourdough

I almost never have commercial yeast in my house any more  I much prefer to make and eat bread with sourdough.  This is mostly because I'm lazy.

Lazy because commercial yeast acts really quickly and you have precise timing for each stage - sourdough is less fussy and gives you an hour or two leeway.

I also really enjoy the flavour of sourdough.  I can make it strongly sour (making a stiff sponge) or mild and lofty (a runny sponge started several days before baking day).  With sourdough you are the master.


Been hankering for a sourdough hot cross bun recipe but I haven't found one yet that captures that certain I don't know what, I remember from my youth.   The Vegan Sourdough Hot Cross Bun Recipe I posted earlier is very good, but I'm looking for something a bit more old fashioned and full of eggs.  So instead of working from a sourdough recipe, I decided to start with a recipe I know and love, and transform it into sourdough.

highly amusing bread book

The recipe I'm starting with is from my most favourite bread book ever:  Homemade Bread by the Food Editors of Farm Journal.  Now, I don't recommend this book to everyone.  In fact, I think most people would be offended by it's attitude towards woman.  But I find it a funny attempt to counter the feminist movement.  I laugh at descriptions how on election night, a woman should be in the kitchen baking Election Night Bread (be careful how you spell that folks) to serve to her husband and his friends from work as they gather around the television watching the polls.

I have Baking with Sourdough
on my kindle

The other reference I'm using to convert this modern recipe is Baking with Sourdough (Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletin) by Sara Pitzer.  It's an excellent reference for beginners and experienced sourdough lovers alike. I find myself referencing it time and again.  I highly recommend it.

Sara writes:

"To adapt a yeast recipe, begin with a small amount of starter, about 1/4 cup... Mix the starter with some flour and some of the liquid from the basic recipe you want to convert.  Figure that 1/4 cup starter has replaced about 1/4 cup flour and slightly less than 1/4 cup liquid in the recipe.... "  She goes on to describes the method of making a sponge, mixing some of the flour and liquid with the starter and letting it sit 4 (for mild flavour) to 24 (for strong flavour) hours.  Then proceed with the regular process, being careful to get the right texture of the dough (it helps to have made the recipe using commercial yeast before hand so you know what the desired texture and consistency of the dough should be) and allowing for longer time rising the dough.  Sara finishes up saying, "If it 'thinks good,' try it." which is exactly what I plan to do.


A few things to note (and Sara's book goes into more detail about this) is that you can control how strong a flavour your sourdough starter gives your bread.  You are not at the mercy of your starter.

One way to control the flavour, making it more mild, is to create a runny sponge a few days before hand.  I usually keep my starter extra-thick and then create a runny sponge from it (using by volume 1 part starter, 1 part flour, and 2 parts water).  Feed it at least once a day for at least 2 days, twice for a more mild texture, don't worry if you make too much, the extra sponge can become sourdough crackers or bread.  By having the sponge runny and at room temperature for a few days before baking day helps make the bread more lofty and less sour.


UPDATE: I just tried my buns and they are officially delicious.  Be posting both recipes very soon.



     

Sausage making marathon

 I just spent the last two days learning to make sausages.  Well, I say learning when in fact it's more like floundering.  But we did it.  One small 25lb leg of pork is now sausages.

I'm exhausted.

And elated.

But in the end I learned a lot about meat, equipment, sausage making and myself.  I also learned that no matter how sexual or sensual food is, there is nothing quite so pornographic as stuffing your own sausage. And because I want this to be an all ages friendly blog, I'm not describing that part any further.  *shudders*.

One thing I learned about myself is that I don't enjoy a meaty sausage (stop snickering, I'm serious).  I like there to be a little bit of filler (okay, I'll join you in a snicker) in the sausage, like bread crumbs.  So I experimented with 5lb batches until I got something that I really enjoyed.  I also played around with what order we add the spices, how much liquid, what ingredients that sort of thing.

Being a pork leg, it was rather lean, so I ran out of fat really quickly.  But I had some beef suet in the freezer that I made do.

I also learned that the hand grinder and sausage stuffer I picked up at (brace yourself) Walmart completely sucks!  It is not properly cast, the threading on the ring is a different TPI than the body of the machine.... and well, I wrote rather a scathing review over on their site, so I'm not going to complain too much here.

What I did ending up doing was using my Universal Food Chopper (which according to most people cannot handle raw meat at all, never, ever, ever!

oh, yah, you can see how much trouble it's having.
I said that last bit sarcastically by the way

This is on the coarse setting for the first pass

My favourite way to make sausage was to chop the fat up by hand, fairly fine (1/2 inch pieces) add to the meat (roughly 2" pieces), mix with the spices, herbs and whatnots.  Freeze for half an hour, chop (technically this machine isn't grinding) on coarse  mix in the bread crumbs, freeze another half an hour, chop on fine, and then mix in the wine.  Freeze 30 min and then stuff away.  It's a lot of work, but the end result this way is in my opinion the most tasty.

sausage resting, waiting to be made into links
looks pretty discussing at this stage.

Still getting the hang of stuffing the sausage and making links, but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this:

They actually look like sausages when you fry them up.  Isn't that nice?

A bit of mustard, a crust of sourdough and some home made sauerkraut and I'm happy as Larry at Lunchtime. 

I'll post my variation on a garlic sausage recipe later, I want to have a few more taste tests to make sure I got it right before I commit anything to the internet.  

Affordable Cooking: Oh yes!  Pork was 98 cent a pound, bread crumbs were made with dried bits crust that would have otherwise gone to the chickens or compost.  Spices (most of which were already in the garden) were next to nothing.  The only real cost would be the 1.5 cups of Plonk (red wine) I used in the garlic sausage.  But if you live outside of Canada or make your own, red wine for cooking is far more affordable.  Casings can be bought at Stuffers and are good quality and affordable.  If you are a home sausage maker like me, go for the discount scrag ends casings.

I'm going to say it cost me $1.25 per pound of finished sausage.  I don't remember how much sausages cost in the shops, but chances are they aren't made to your specific dietary needs and desires.  

Cooking with Allergies:  A major yes for this one.  Sausages are infinitely variable.  you can even go the vegan rout and get artificial casings and fill them with spiced up lentil mush.  

By making my own sausage I can eat sausages for the first time in my life without getting a stomach ache. 

Healthy? Mostly yes since you are choosing your own ingredients and salt content.  Sausages need quite a bit of fat (20 to 40%) to have the right texture, so this may pose a problem for some people.  However, I don't eat many sausages (one a meal is plenty for me) and always match it with something like sauerkraut to aid in digestion. 

With my basic understanding of healthy eating, I would say yes, these sausages are good for you when taken internally and in moderation.

Making Hummus Manually - introducting the universal food chopper

  

Hummus is one of my favourite feel good foods.  It's simple yet flavourful.  It's spicy yet somehow also soothingly mild.

Hummus gets along well with everyone, be it cheese or crackers, carrots, or apples.  It's the perfect food for dipping, or just dipping one's fingers in and licking them sensually.

Hummus is perhaps the second most sensual food, after chocolate of course.  If you make your own, you can make it crunchy or silky.  Piquant or soothing.  It stimulates the senses and the appetite.

As some of you may have figured out by now, my blitzer and I do not get on well.   An, my blender... well... we don't talk any more.  But I did happen to get my hands on rather a nifty gadget at a junk shop the other day.  It's called a universal food chopper and according to the ephemera of it's time (circa 1890s through 1960s) it can handle anything.  But can it handle hummus?

Yes.  It can.



Using my standard hummus recipe, and the nut butter attachment, I pealed and used the food chopper to mush up the garlic, then went to work on the well drained chickpeas.

The chickpeas come out looking rather flaky, but they are soft as butter.

I mixed in the usual and massaged it with my hands for about 10 seconds to blend well.  I suppose I could use a spoon (and would do if I was cooking for someone else) but hey, it's an excuse to get my hands dirty.

Time-wise, including cleaning, it took the same amount of time as using a blitzer.  It did take more concentrated effort on my part, but that might be part of the learning curve.  I now know I can make hummus if the power goes out, which is a good skill to be able to have during storm season or zombie apocalypse.