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

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 Steven 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

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