✪ Welcome, Citizen! ✪

✮ The Food Dictator ✮

The Food Revolution Begins Now!

You are here: Home / Archives for Beef

The Hirshon Ancient Roman “Burgers”

by Leave a Comment

The Hirshon Ancient Roman "Burgers"

Roman Burgers Image Used Under Creative Commons License From museumcrush.org

Citizens, the antiquarian and the gastronome have perfectly fused in the persona of the mighty TFD – none can match my passion for both of these topics – although the people at museumcrush.org give me a run for the money! 🙂

As noted in their article that sparked the desire to document and enhance this recipe:

Did Romans really invent the burger?

Rightly or wrongly, the Romans have been credited with bringing many things to Britain: from roads and pavements to heated baths and indoor plumbing. But a new discovery is giving them credit for a quintessentially American invention – the beef burger.

A recipe from the ancient Roman cookbook, Apicius, written by an unknown author during the late 4th or 5th centuries AD, details a dish called ‘Isicia Omentata’ made of minced meat, pepper, wine, pine nuts and a rich fish-based sauce (Garum), all formed into a patty.

The Roman delicacy, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the modern day burger, will be served up at Birdoswald Roman Fort on Hadrian’s Wall this weekend so that visitors can make up their own mind – and taste the ‘Roman Burger’ for the first time in 1,000 years.

It has long been known that the Romans brought ‘fast food joints’ – or thermopolia as they called them – to Britain. In large towns people wanted access to quick food during their lunch break and vendors selling chicken legs, lamb chops and shellfish became commonplace.

“We all know that the Romans left a huge mark on Britain, fundamentally altering the British diet forever,” says Food Historian Dr Annie Gray. “Street food became available en masse, and many of our favourite foods were introduced, including Isicia Omentata, what can be seen as the Roman forefather to today’s burger.”

According to Dr Gray, the Roman burger was “decidedly more upmarket” than many of today’s offerings, with a “richer and more complex” recipe than the plain beef version most common today.

“Since our ‘Roman Burger’, other similar recipes can be seen throughout history,” she adds. “There were the more flat or meatball-like Medieval ‘Pompeys’ or ‘Rissoles’, Georgian ‘Patties’ which popularised fried mince meat, and, by the end of the Victorian era, we see the first proper Hamburger. Burgers aren’t a modern invention – rather, a staple throughout the centuries that has evolved.”

More than 10,000 soldiers would have been based at forts such as Birdoswald at the peak of Roman occupation along Hadrian’s Wall. Having access to tasty, convenient food was vitally important as they patrolled the frontier and vendors serving fast food would have been commonplace in large towns.

Citizens, I’ve tweaked the recipe to include some fresh lovage, an herb tasting of celery that was very popular in ancient Roman recipes and rounds this version out nicely to my palate. I also spec the use of asafœtida (I spell it the old way with a ligature). Asafœtida is a dried resin used in Indian cuisine that tastes strongly of garlic. It’s a replacement for a lost Roman herb called Silphium.

As noted on the intriguing site www.romanobritain.org:

Silphium, was an herb much-prized by Roman cooks which came from the former Greek colony of Cyrenaica — which was located in what is now the Eastern coastal region of Libya.

To make an ounce of silphium last longer, the cookbook of Apicius recommends keeping it in a jar of pine-nuts, Possible Silphium (Giant Tangier Fennel)which would then absorb the flavour, much as a vanilla pod is used today in a jar of sugar.

After the First Century A.D., Silphium seems to have become unobtainable and Pliny reported that the last known stalk of silphium that was found in Cyrenaica was given to the Emperor Nero “as a curiosity” — which, according to some accounts, he promptly ate.

After the decline of silphium, substitute herbs such as Asafoetida were then often used in place of Silphium. Silphium was long considered extinct, but is thought to possibly be the Giant Tangier Fennel (Ferula tingitana), but that is not a universal belief and there is much to disprove this notion (not the least of which the plant doesn’t really look like the ancient depictions)… You’ll probably have to just do like they did and use Asafoetida.

You can find excellent-quality whole chunk asafœtida here. Please grind up a TINY amount to a powder in a spice grinder – a TINY pinch is more than enough, trust me!

Caul fat is an awesome fat membrane that wraps the burgers and keeps them juicy as well as crisping up deliciously during cooking! Your butcher can order some for you. Garum is a condiment that was beloved by the Romans (they used it in practically EVERYTHING) and is best replaced by top-quality fish sauce. This is my choice.

Ironically, this will taste VERY southeast Asian to a modern-day palate – and it is supremely delicious! Make these at your next weekend BBQ and regale your guests with its history as they regale YOU with compliments!

Enjoy this delicious taste of antiquity, my Citizens!

Battle on – The Generalissimo

Print
The Hirshon Ancient Roman “Burgers”
Rate this recipe

Ingredients

  • A tiny bit over a pound of minced beef (500g), preferably dry-aged
  • 2 ¼ ounces (60g) pine nuts - try and use those of Italian or Korean origin, not Chinese
  • 3 tsp. Garum (a salty fish sauce – use Red Boat 40N fish sauce as a good substitute)
  • 1 tsp. dry red wine
  • Ground pepper
  • small handful Cilantro leaves
  • small handful Lovage (strongly preferred) or celery leaves, minced
  • 2 Juniper berries, crushed (optional but recommended)
  • a TINY pinch of asafœtida
  • Caul fat (optional but recommended)

Instructions

  1. Grind up the pine kernels, and then mix in with the minced meat and other ingredients.
  2. Shape the mixture into 4 patties, wrap this in Caul Fat (if using, and I hope you are!).
  3. Cook over a medium heat or BBQ for 5 minutes on each side. Serve plain or in a flat bread bun.
https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-ancient-roman-burgers/

The Hirshon New England Boiled Dinner

by Leave a Comment

The Hirshon New England Boiled Dinner

New England Boiled Dinner Image Used Under Creative Commons License From pinterest.com

Citizens, your always stalwart Scion of supreme savoriness – the always alliterative TFD! – honed his love for cold during my youth when I went to school in Massachusetts. While there, I had the opportunity to sample the legendary meal of the region – New England Boiled Dinner!

As noted on atlasobscura.com:

CORNED BEEF HAS BEEN AROUND for centuries, and it will be on the tables of Irish-Americans this St. Patrick’s Day. But in and around Boston, corned beef looks a little different. Instead of its familiar pink-red color, it’s gray-brown. And no one quite knows why New Englanders do corned beef differently.

The color difference is due to one ingredient: nitrates, either in the form of sodium nitrate or saltpeter, added into the salty brine that gives brisket its corned taste and flavor.

Nitrates preserve meat and give it a reddish color, two compelling qualities that make red corned beef much more popular than gray. Nitrates, which are potentially carcinogenic, have long been controversial. But in an age before refrigeration, they were a blessing. In the 17th century, even saltpeter-containing gunpowder was rubbed on meat.

Without added nitrates, corned beef is a dull gray. It’s uncommon to find, except in certain regions. “[Gray] corned beef is eaten within a fifty-mile radius of Boston, including a few towns in New Hampshire,” writes Joan Nathan, author of An American Folklife Cookbook.

The usefulness of nitrates have made red corned beef the norm for hundreds of years. One of America’s most influential early cookbooks, The Virginia Housewife, calls for tablespoons of saltpeter to be rubbed over brisket. But it’s unknown why exactly Boston residents opted not to put saltpeter on their beef.

Robert S. Cox, author of books on New England specialties such as chowder, cranberries, and pie, says it’s a mystery to him too. “It’s gray, like the New England skies in late winter,” he says, “but I don’t get a sense that corned beef is that poetic.”

The gray/pink dichotomy is especially visible this time of year, as people prepare corned beef and cabbage. But according to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink, not only is the beef not naturally pink, corned beef with cabbage isn’t really an Irish specialty. On the Emerald Isle, a festive St. Paddy’s Day meal would include lamb or bacon. Instead, Irish-American corned beef and cabbage is a mash-up of different food traditions, one of which may hold the answer to the origin of gray corned beef.

Irish immigrants coming to the United States in the 19th century had extensive experience raising, curing, and exporting beef for the English. Beef was much cheaper in the United States, and many communities embraced it as a staple, such as the preserved meats of Jewish delicatessens.

Irish immigrants who lived in New England, especially around Boston, were quickly introduced to another tradition: New England’s boiled dinner. Consisting of corned beef and vegetables, boiled for hours, it soon became an Irish-American specialty. In Boston, at least, it’s often made with the mysterious gray corned beef.

If anyone would know the origins of Boston’s gray corned beef, it would be 79-year-old Al Cohen, a butcher and grocer at Bell’s Market in South Boston since the 1960s. His family has run markets in Boston over four generations, making gray corned beef all the while.

Cohen, who makes corned beef by the barrel from a family recipe, says he has no idea who started making the specialty. He prefers it, and he doesn’t offer the red kind at Bell’s: Customers who ask for it are directed to the supermarket. But there is one thing he’s certain about: The 900 pounds of what he proudly calls “New England gray corned beef,” which he’s made in the last week, will all be gone before St. Patrick’s Day.

Jasper White remains one of my all-time favorite chefs – his cookbook ”Jasper White`s Cooking from New England” from the early ’90’s re-defined New England cuisine and remains an indispensable weapon in my cooking arsenal!

In this excerpted article from the Chicago Tribune, Chef White extols the glory of his native cuisine:

‘We have this terrible image problem with `stodgy` New England and frumpy-looking people with their blue blazers and their tasteless, bland, boiled food,” White grumbled the other day.

”I’ve tried to bring to New England cooking just a little glamor and pizzaz,” White said. ”Now that America has gotten over its Francophilia, it’s much easier for us to take a look at food that is good and will always be good.”

In 1983, White and his wife, Nancy, opened Jasper’s in a former molasses warehouse on the Boston wharf. There he has evolved New England cooking into a sort of international cuisine with Native American influences remaining strong (baked beans, clam bakes, steamed brown bread), while Italian, British and other overseas touches are accorded their proper place.

”I’ve taken what I think was good out of the traditional repertoire and touched it up while trying to leave it fairly authentic,” White explained.

White not only defends the New England boiled dinner, he extols it.

”It’s really one of the great dishes of our region,” he said. ”In a sense, it’s America’s only boiled dinner, and almost every country has one. Ireland, for example, has corned beef and cabbage. Ours is not to be underestimated.”

”There aren’t any tricks to the New England boiled dinner. It’s a matter of not putting everything into the pot too early. You let the brisket cook until it’s almost cooked through. And then you add the vegetables in their proper order. It’s like a bouillabaisse-whichever vegetable takes longest to cook goes in first. One of the most important ingredients in a boiled dinner is the beets. Those are cooked separately.”

A look of bliss came over White’s face, an expression rarely seen on anyone when the topic is boiled dinners. ”I love this food. I’m really passionate about it,” he said. ”It’s what I serve my friends when they come over for Super Bowl Sunday.”

”I’ve also included a lot of the ethnic foods around New England, especially Portuguese. We have a large Portuguese population, and they pretty much control the Massachusetts fishing industry now.”

Citizens, my version of this classic adds several touches of elegance and flavor to the humble dish. First off, I veer strongly into Portuguese territory by adding some Portuguese Linguiça sausage to the corned beef. Be sure and use the best Massachusetts Portuguese version of the sausage, you can buy it here if you don’t live in Massachusetts.

Finding the true “gray-cured” beef outside Massachusetts is almost impossible, but the glory of the Web means you can order it online here. If you don’t want to use it, try using an artisinally-made corned beef instead. I also recommend an optional touch of demiglace to the gravy for added richness – leave it out if you so prefer. You can buy it here.

The spice mix really adds to the total flavor and I’ve borrowed several amazing techniques from jabberwockystew.net, as noted here:

As outlined on jabberwockystew.net:

The things I do not like about boiled dinners are the mushy carrots and potatoes and the thin, watery broth.

Pre-cooking can give some vegetables and fruits a persistent firmness. The low heat causes a enzymatic reaction between the pectin and the calcium to create a network structure that does not break down in high heat. No more mushy carrots or potatoes!

If you simply throw many vegetables into a pot at high heat some of them will turn mushy when they become even slightly over-cooked. However, if you cook some vegetables at 120º-160º F for 20 minutes their firmness will become set and further cooking at a higher temperature will not make them go soft. These include: potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, beans, cauliflower, tomatoes, cherries, and apples.

A second suggestion, from the same article, was to use a cartouche. Instead of removing the vegetables and reducing the broth, you use a parchment paper lid. This allows the most of the liquid to escape as steam, while still keeping enough of it close to the vegetables so that they cook evenly and completely.

<TFD note – directions on making a cartouche are here.>

My version of this recipe brings nobility and a complexity of flavor that the typical boiled dinner lacks – the use of Portuguese sausage adds even more savor! Don’t wait until the next St. Patrick’s Day to make this delicious meal, Citizens!

Battle on – The Generalissimo

Print
The Hirshon New England Boiled Dinner
Rate this recipe

The Hirshon New England Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

  • For the meat and boiling liquid:
  • 4 ½ lbs. gray-cured brisket of beef in one piece (preferred) or use regular corned beef if you live outside Massachusetts - (this comes packed in about a cup and a half of brine with whole spices)
  • 1 ½ pounds Portuguese Linguiça (TFD addition, for the classic boiled dinner, just increase the brisket size to 6 pounds and omit the sausage)
  • 10 cloves garlic, cracked
  • ½ Tbsp. peppercorns, cracked
  • 6 sprigs fresh thyme
  • 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
  • 2 whole cloves
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 2 dried chilies de arbol
  • cheesecloth
  • ***
  • Vegetables:
  • 8 beets, about 2 pounds
  • 20 small white boiling onions
  • 7 medium-size carrots, peeled
  • 6 medium-size Maine potatoes, peeled and cut in half
  • 1 medium-size Maine potato, peeled and grated
  • 6 small purple-top turnips, peeled, or 1 rutabaga, peeled and cut in pieces
  • 6 parsnips, peeled
  • 1 tsp. black pepper, finely ground
  • 1 small cabbage, cut into 6 wedges and tied with string
  • 2 tablespoons freshly chopped Italian parsley
  • parchment paper for cartouche
  • Demiglace to thicken sauce (optional but TFD likes it a lot)
  • ***
  • Condiments:
  • Freshly graded horseradish mixed with a little sour cream
  • Dijon or Pommery mustard
  • Mustard pickle (spicy mixed-vegetable pickle made with onions, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and cauliflower; it gets its distinct flavor from dried mustard)

Instructions

  1. Leave all the fat on the brisket and trim the excess off at the end of the cooking. Place the corned beef in a large Dutch oven and add water to cover the meat. Put all the spices into a piece of cheesecloth and tie it up.
  2. Note that corned beef is extremely salty. Do not add any extra salt. It is possible that the final sauce may be too salty for some diners. Serve it on the side, so that each person may control their salt intake.
  3. Note: For the Dutch oven I was using, covering the meat took about 12 cups of water.
  4. Bring the pot to a boil and cover. Reduce the heat and simmer for 3-4 hours, until the meat is fork tender. In the last 30 minutes, add the linguiça. Two or three times in the first hour, skim any froth that has risen to the top of the liquid.
  5. Tip: You may do this on the stove top, but I prefer to put the Dutch oven in a 325º F oven.
  6. Stick a large, two-tined fork into the meat; the fork should come out very easily. If not, continue simmering until it does.
  7. Remove the meats from the pot and wrap them with foil and set it in the warm oven. Discard the spice bag.
  8. Add the reserved grated potato and bring it to a boil, on the stovetop.
  9. Remove the pot from the heat and add all the remaining potatoes, onions, carrots and turnips in as close to a single layer as you can.
  10. When you add all of the vegetables it will cool off the cooking broth. Insert a thermometer into the broth to check the temperature. You want the starting temperature to be between 150º and 160º F.
  11. If it is too low, return the pot to the heat, briefly, and reheat until the broth reaches that temperature (but not higher).
  12. Cover the pot and let it rest for 20 minutes, off the heat.
  13. Replace the pot lid with a cartouche and bring the pot to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15-25 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
  14. About five minutes before the vegetables are done, gently stir in the ground black pepper.
  15. Transfer the vegetables to a pan and put them in the oven with the meat, to stay warm.
  16. Arrange the cabbage wedges in the broth and cover them with the cartouche. Simmer the cabbage for 6-8 minutes until they are done—firm, but slightly wilted.
  17. Put the cabbage wedges in the oven with the other vegetables.
  18. Return the meat to the broth and heat for two minutes, turning the meat once half way through.
  19. Transfer the meat to a cutting board and slice the corned beef across the grain. Arrange the slices on a platter and place the vegetables and cabbage around the meat.
  20. Place the cabbage wedges on last, removing the strings as you go. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.
  21. Serve with horseradish, mustard or mustard pickle. Serve the sauce and fresh cracked pepper on the side.
  22. If the sauce is still thin, you may thicken it with a bit of cornstarch mixed with water or with TFD’s preference, demiglace.
https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-new-england-boiled-dinner/

The Hirshon Romanian Jewish Garlic “Tenderloin” – Friptura de Usturoi Românesc Evreiesc

by Leave a Comment

The Hirshon Romanian Jewish Garlic “Tenderloin"

Romanian Tenderloin Image Used Under Creative Commons License From drinkinnridin.wordpress.com

My Citizens, here is the second half of the 2 recipe “Crown Jewels” that defined a dinner at the old Roumanian (the u is correct in this context) Jewish steak houses of yore! 🙂

This recipe – despite its Romanian name, may or may not originate from that distant land! As noted in this erudite and excerpted article from michaelgebert.com:

An historic Chicago dish: “Roumanian” skirt steak

It’s not exclusively Chicagoan, nor is it clearly Romanian, as we’ll see.

But at one time Romanian (or Roumanian) skirt steak was a famous dish in Chicago, and dining at Manny’s the other night, where it’s been added to the new dinner menu, I was surprised that it was unfamiliar to my dining acquaintances who grew up here, though less surprised that it was scarfed happily and admiringly.

The supposed Romanian-ness of Romanian skirt steak baffled a few folks, particularly those who’ve actually been to Romania, and didn’t think it especially resembled anything eaten there. It baffled this newspaper reporter for the Hudson Valley Journal News, too.

Even Google doesn’t get you a clear answer as to what makes a Romanian skirt steak Romanian. Ken DeNicola, owner with his partners of Frank’s Steaks, isn’t sure either – even though it has been the signature dish at Frank’s in Jericho in Long Island for 20 years…

Here’s a clue: a pair of famous Dutch comedians, Weber and Fields. Do a quick search and you should turn up a few clips from their recordings.

Dutch comedians, you say? They sound Lower East Side Jewish. And so they were, a famous Jewish vaudeville team. Dutch in this context actually comes from “Deutsch,” German, and German in this context actually means Jewish. But on the vaudeville circuit in those days of widespread casual anti-semitism, “Jewish comics from New York” was thought to be too sensitive and might drive audiences in the sticks away, so “Dutch comic” was the euphemism.

Which everyone knew meant Jewish comics from New York, not jokes about Rembrandt and wooden shoes, but no one ever said prejudice was rational. Vot de hell am I talkink about mit de Dutch comics? Vere did mein shkirt shteak go? you ask. Well, here’s my point. Like “Dutch” in vaudeville, “Roumanian” in the restaurant biz was transparent code for “Jewish.”

To this day “Roumanian” retains enough of a meaning of Jewish food that, of course, there’s a kosher meat shop up on Clark called Romanian, selling things you presumably don’t see much of in Bucharest, like hot dogs and bologna. (And, of course, in New York there’s Sammy’s Roumanian.)

So where does skirt steak enter this picture? Well, it’s an inexpensive cut, a bit of a throwaway today since there’s not that much of it per steer and thus it’s inefficient for modern meat counters to sell (hence its relegation to restaurants where it gets chopped, like fajitas).

But marinate it to tenderize it, then grill it and it’s a very tasty piece. And as a long thin cut that covers a lot of plate, it always looks like a good value as steak goes.

A whole genre of “Roumanian” restaurants serving it grew up in places like the Lower East Side in New York and the Maxwell Street area here, back when that neighborhood was widely known as Jewtown — and was conveniently close to the stockyards, making it easy to pick up a scrap cut in quantity.

I doubt that modern ethnic food aficionados will have difficulty projecting themselves back into the mindset of the kind of customer who would have passed by the proper dining rooms at the Loop hotels, to venture instead to a bohemian hole in the wall in Jewtown serving inexpensive steak with, probably, a violinist playing Humoresque, a mural of Old Country scenes painted by an itinerant artist, and a interestingly bohemian crowd.

Next the question comes: were there actual Romanians involved? It seems that there must have been at some early stage in the dish’s existence, else it would be Russian skirt steak or Warsaw skirt steak, but to judge by John Drury’s Dining in Chicago, a 1931 guide to Chicago restaurants, it’s fairly impossible to tell how Romanian the Romanian places really were, or if they were no more Romanian than the famous Hollywood restaurateur Mike Romanoff was Russian nobility.

In fact, he lists without noticing the contradiction a Jewish restaurant and a Romanian one side by side, both serving “Roumanian steak,” and to modern eyes the distinction seems hard to spot, since it’s the “Jewish” restaurant that seems to have the more authentically Romanian proprietor (Papa Elias Strulevitz), while the Roumanian place has a decidedly Germanic name (Goldstein’s), and in any case they’re within a couple of blocks of each other in the Jewish part of town.

He finishes by noting that Goldstein’s was “the favorite eating place of Tine Bimbo, the king of the Gypsies,” which is one of those sentences that conjures up an entire world in which the king of the Gypsies is somebody reporters like Ben Hecht and Walter Howey would have run into during a night on the town.

Even if Drury made all that stuff up (“The apple strudel at Klamminger’s is so renowned that Lin Yi-Chao, legendary warlord of Mongolia, had it flown it by dirigible to his troops before his siege of Nanking”), it is a joy to read, and makes our modern era seem so colorless by comparison (“Shaw’s was a favorite eating place of Richard Notebaert, former CEO of Ameritech”).

This distinction between a Jewish restaurant and a Roumanian one is likewise muddied in the discussion of Cafe Royale, where “Jewish, Russian and Roumanian dishes tempt your palate” amid the bohemian (but not Bohemian) revelry. Most likely, the so-called Roumanian restaurateurs were merely savvy sorts who saw a good thing and figured, Polish, Roumanian, who’s gonna know?

They had Roumanian chefs from Minsk by way of Brooklyn, we have sushi chefs from Seoul– and Guadalajara.You can pretty much guess where Roumanian skirt steaks survives– Manny’s, Myron and Phil’s, and other old school places in suburbs with high Jewish populations.

Have one at Manny’s and you will be eating, quite literally, in the footsteps of urban adventurers 70 and 80 years ago who made a similar trek to the vicinity of Halsted and Roosevelt, to pay a little less for a steak with a lot of flavor and an extra side of atmosphere from the old country—whichever old country that actually was.

As further reported on jewishexponent.com:

Skirt steak was favored because of its rich, beefy taste and comparatively low price. It comes in two varieties: the outside skirt, cut from the plate primal just behind the brisket, and the more common inside skirt, cut from the flank primal, as is the adjacent flank steak. The inside skirt is well-marbled, but stringy.

Proper cooking and slicing, however, turns this cut into a beef-eater’s delight. The key to successfully making your own Romanian tenderloin is to refrain from overcooking. Go one step beyond medium-rare and you’ve got shoe leather. And it must be sliced across the grain to keep it chewable.

Although garlic is the essential flavor component to Romanian steak, there are optional ingredients and varying techniques on how to make the most of those flavors.

Make sure your grill, whether gas or charcoal, is as hot as you can make it. Cook only to rare or medium rare. Depending on the cut and thickness, that will take only three to four minutes a side.

Let the steak rest for a few minutes before slicing across the grain of skirt or flank steaks; grain is of lesser concern with rib and shell steaks, which you can either slice for serving or cut into portions for diners to carve on their own.

Citizens, I choose to believe in the Romanian origin of this recipe – the unreal amounts of garlic are typical of many Transylvanian recipes (no Dracula jokes, please!) and I have chosen to update this classic with more Romanian spices in the marinade and a sauce made from gribenes – rendered chicken skin, cooked onions and schmaltz (chicken fat) blended into a rich chicken stock as a sauce instead of a topping.

I also happily cribbed some suggestions from the great BBQ maven Steve Raichlen as well as some ideas from Mark Bittman and Deli royalty Noah Bernamoff as well. This is truly a recipe for the ages – and just for the record, it also makes the best fajitas EVER.

Battle on – The Generalissimo

Print
The Hirshon Romanian Jewish Garlic “Tenderloin”
Rate this recipe

The Hirshon Romanian Jewish Garlic “Tenderloin"

Ingredients

  • For the steak:
  • 1 ½ pounds top-quality dry-aged skirt steaks, preferably outer skirt (your butcher will know)
  • 9 cloves of garlic (reserve 2 pressed cloves for brushing the steak after it’s cooked)
  • Coarse salt (kosher or sea), freshly-ground black pepper, Hungarian hot paprika, freshly-ground caraway
  • 4 tbsp. olive oil, divided
  • 1 tbsp. dried oregano
  • ***
  • Scallion sauce:
  • 1 bunch of scallions, roots removed
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled
  • ¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • ⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • ½ cup canola oil
  • Fresh lemon juice
  • ***
  • Gribene sauce:
  • ¾ lb. chicken skin and fat, diced (use scissors, or freeze then dice with a knife)
  • ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ½ medium onion, peeled and cut into ¼-inch slices
  • 1 bunch fresh thyme
  • ***
  • 4 scallions for cooking / garnish

Instructions

  1. First, pound those steaks! HARD! A meat mallet is ideal, a big hammer also suffices.
  2. Place the steaks in a baking dish. Generously season them on both sides with salt, pepper, caraway and hot paprika. Drizzle the steaks on both sides with 2 tbsp. olive oil, patting it on with your fingertips. Sprinkle the 7 cloves of pressed garlic and oregano over the steaks, again patting them on with your fingertips. Let the steaks marinate in the refrigerator, covered, for 2 to 4 hours. Be sure you tightly cover the baking dish with plastic wrap.
  3. For the scallion sauce:
  4. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Add scallions and blanch about 30 seconds, until crisp-tender. Drain and plunge into a bowl of ice water, then drain again.
  5. Chop the scallions and combine them with garlic, parsley, and lemon zest in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse several times. While the processor is running, add the oils in a slow, steady stream through the hole in the top. Continue processing until oils have emulsified and the sauce has a loose, fairly consistent texture. Add salt and lemon juice to taste.
  6. For the gribene sauce:
  7. In a large nonstick skillet over medium heat, toss chicken skin and fat with salt and 1 tablespoon water and spread out in one layer. Cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes, until fat starts to render and skin begins to turn golden at the edges.
  8. Add onions and thyme and cook 45 to 60 minutes longer, tossing occasionally, until chicken skin and onions are crispy and richly browned, but not burned.Strain through a sieve. Reserve most of the schmaltz for another use and discard the thyme.
  9. If you want the gribenes to be crispier, return to the skillet and cook over high heat until done to taste. Drain gribenes on a paper-towel-lined plate.
  10. Whiz gribenes in a food processor with rich chicken stock until you have a sauce consistency.
  11. For the cooked scallion garnish:
  12. Return the pan to high heat with 1 tbsp. of the schmaltz from the gribene making. Add spring onions and cook, turning once, until lightly charred, 3 to 4 minutes. Reserve (you can put them in a low oven to keep warm if you want).
  13. Set up the grill for direct grilling and preheat to high.
  14. When ready to cook, brush and oil the grill grate. Place the steaks on the hot grate and grill until cooked to taste, 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium-rare. When ready to turn, the steaks will be nicely browned on the bottom. To test for doneness, use the poke method; the meat should be gently yielding for medium-rare.
  15. Transfer the steaks to a platter or plates and let rest for 5 minutes.
  16. While resting, combine the remaining 2 coves pressed garlic with the remaining 2 tbsp. olive oil, stir, then brush over steaks. Spread the scallion and gribene sauces on plates, add steaks and garnish with cooked scallions. Serve immediately.
https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-romanian-jewish-garlic-tenderloin-friptura-de-usturoi-romanesc-evreiesc/