Best Food Writing 2012

by Holly Hughes (ed) (epub)

  First, the meat goes into an injection machine, where it’s shot up with a salty solution. Then it gets a quick brine, is coated in spices, and gets smoke flavor—either briefly, over actual smoldering wood chips, or more likely on a grill like at a backyard barbecue, where the “smoke” comes from fatty juices flaring up against hot metal. Or even in a chamber of aerosolized liquid smoke. The whole process is over in a matter of hours, after which the meat is vacuum-sealed in plastic so it can sit in a cooler for weeks before it’s dumped in some deli’s steamer to cook for a few hours.

  And probably not surprisingly, the factory dons are vague about where they get the meat for their clients’ famous pastrami. We can guess it’s not grass-fed.

  The truth about pastrami isn’t exactly a secret. David Sax’s book Save the Deli, published in 2009, revealed the state of industrialization of high-end deli meats. And it’s not that pastrami’s an unpalatable product. A pastrami sandwich from one of America’s storied delis can be great. (LA food critic Jonathan Gold, for instance, thinks Langer’s makes the best pastrami sandwich in the country.)

  But handmade everything is the new ethos among a certain breed of chef. And those opening up nouveau Jewish delis think they can do better. As it turns out, though, making pastrami is a lot more challenging than making rugelach and whitefish salad.

  Navel Gazing

  Problem number one: To make old-timey pastrami, the way the original preindustrial New Yorkers did it, you have to use the navel: a fatty belly cut akin to bacon on a hog. It’s got thick streaks of fat that ensure the meat stays moist.

  At Saul’s, a New York–style Jewish deli in Berkeley, California, co-owner Peter Levitt learned it’s nearly impossible to use navel without going broke. Levitt, a former Chez Panisse chef, makes some essential deli products in-house: sodas, pickles, kreplach. But when it came to pastrami, the traditional ingredients were out of reach. The navel used to be a cheap cut of meat. Nowadays it’s expensive, thanks to demand from Asia. (In China and South Korea, the navel is prized.) Adding to his problems was Levitt’s desire to find sustainably raised navel—after all, Michael Pollan is a regular at Saul’s.

  For a few weeks, while he was trying to locate the right navel, Levitt took pastrami off the menu. A Jewish deli without pastrami? You can imagine how well that went over. For nearly two weeks, servers wore buttons on their aprons reading “Pastrami Under Construction.” Some customers were pissed, and Levitt continues to get calls from people asking, with trepidation, if pastrami is still “not on the menu.”

  When Levitt was finally able to source sustainable navel, it was cost-prohibitive because the meat is so fatty that the usable portion from one slab of navel is very small. There’s a reason why most pastrami these days is made from brisket, with a tendency toward dryness. And now Saul’s is too.

  Mystery Meat

  Problem number two: If nobody’s making “real” pastrami anymore, how are you supposed to know what it’s supposed to taste like? Sort of a funny question, but that was a real conundrum for Leo Beckerman and Evan Bloom. In late 2010 when the two former college buddies started Wise Sons, a pop-up Jewish deli in San Francisco, they knew they wanted to make their own pastrami, but they had no models to follow. Nobody they knew was making honest-to-God nonfactory pastrami, so they had no one to learn from. They had to turn to the Canadians for help.

  Mile End Deli in Brooklyn, opened by Canadians Noah Bernamoff and his wife, Rae Cohen, in 2009, makes its own Montreal smoked beef. (Canada never lost its tradition of delis smoking and curing their own beef the way America did.) Mile End’s product was as close to traditional pastrami as Beckerman and Bloom could find. The most noticeable thing about it was the intense smokiness that most American pastrami has lost.

  Using the Bernamoffs as their guide, Beckerman and Bloom began to experiment. After trial and error, they developed an authentic-tasting recipe. First the meat (they experimented with navel but soon abandoned it for brisket) gets “wet cured” in brine and pickling spices for a week. Then it sits another couple of days on a rack, coated in powdered spices, until it dries out and develops a crust (the technical term is pellicle). Then it smokes for six to ten hours over hickory chunks.

  At the end, they get meat that’s both smokier and more beefy-tasting than factory pastrami, that’s chewier, and that has an almost creamy texture from fat marbling. After nearly two weeks of work, it better be good.

  Is It Worth It?

  Of course, not every old-fashioned process works in the modern world. Ever tried making your own salt by evaporating seawater, or not washing your hair like the Native Americans did? At Portland, Oregon, deli Kenny & Zuke’s there’s been some backsliding on the road to authenticity. One of the earliest pastrami revivalists, co-owner Ken Gordon started making his own while still a chef in a Portland bistro, six years ago. He used the navel. But at Kenny & Zuke’s, he found the original recipe to be off-putting for many Portlanders.

  “It was too fatty,” he says. “My grandparents came over from Russia and Warsaw and ate serious chunks of fat and died in their 60s. These days customers want it lean.”

  So the deli switched to what people are used to: brisket.

  Now Kenny & Zuke’s pastrami has a cult following. (One reviewer described their sandwich as capable of bringing a woman to orgasm.)

  And yet a week’s worth of curing is a long time. Imagine you’re burning through, say, 2,000 pounds of pastrami a week. How are you going to keep up? And where are you going to find the walk-in space? Such were the problems for Kenny & Zuke’s. Add to that the fact that Gordon has designs on Whole Foods—he hopes eventually to get FDA approval to package his pastrami to sell to retailers.

  And so, there have been some tweaks to Kenny & Zuke’s traditional-ness. To shave a few days off the curing process, the meat no longer goes through the long brining. Instead, it’s injected, just like the factories do it.

  Berkeley’s Levitt has started injecting, too. He was a pastrami purist, but these days he says he doesn’t think the old-timey wet brine makes any difference to the taste of the meat.

  And a week after opening their brick-and-mortar delicatessen, Wise Sons’ Evan Bloom is already thinking about how he can speed up the curing process.

  The revivalists’ pastrami still tastes great, though. It still sells like crazy. And it’s still handmade. After all, Gordon’s and Levitt’s employees are the ones holding the syringe. For now.

  Somebody tell the gorilla that he can come back for a pastrami sandwich.

  PASSOVER GOES GOURMET

  By Rachel Levin

  From Sunset

  Once you’ve conquered pastrami making, why not throw a hipster Seder for the Bay Area? Freelance travel and food writer Rachel Levin laid to rest ghosts of Passovers past at this pop-up event in a San Francisco warehouse.

  Why was this night different from all other nights? For starters, there was a bar. And not a bottle of sticky-sweet Manischewitz behind it. People at this Passover Seder were drinking. Good wine. Before the first of the traditional four glasses was poured.

  Second, people were dressed in jeans. My mother never let me wear even my very best Jordache to any Jewish holiday. Skirts only, and tights that would sag around my ankles. Now, three decades later, I swapped a pair of faded cords for a stylish purple number and heels. I hadn’t felt this overdressed since I wore a bathing suit to the Big Sur hot springs.

  Third, this wasn’t my grandparents’ house in a manicured Boston suburb, but a mod cafe in a former warehouse in San Francisco. My aunts and crazy cousins were clear across the country. There were no conversations-cum-arguments about what route everyone took to get there. Or kids’ tables topped with Dixie cups of Welch’s white grape juice.

  Above all, apart from my Caribbean-born gentile friend George—whom I’d dragged here while my Jewish husband was, uh, at a Black Crowes concert—this was a Seder of strangers. All different backgrounds. Fifty folks here voluntarily, not because their paren
ts forced them.

  The big draw? The food. Cooked, not by Grandma Hannah, but by Leo Beckerman and Evan Bloom, whose Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen pop-up here had an instant cult following. Lines snaked down sidewalks for their hand-sliced artisanal spin on pastrami. The demand for good deli—in a city long lacking it—grew so strong that the duo recently opened a real-deal restaurant. Last April, their first-ever public Passover Seder sold out within minutes by word of mouth.

  Imagine, the promise of gefilte fish that good.

  Strangers become friends

  Candles were lit. Communal tables were set. Sparely. No lacy white tablecloths or Blue Danube china. Playing silently on a screen was the ’50s classic film The Ten Commandments. I mean, Charlton Heston’s low-tech parting of the Red Sea is the kind of Seder entertainment I could’ve used as a kid.

  I loved my grandpa Orrin, I really did. He was a kind, lanky doctor in a knit tie and corduroy blazer. But his Seders were by-the-book snooze.

  Here was fresh-faced 28-year-old Leo! With waist-length dreadlocks pulled back in a ponytail, he had a cool, confident command over the room that would no doubt make his own grandfather proud. After the blessing over the wine, servers presented plates of matzo. It was blistered, cracker-thin, imperfectly shaped. And not from a box, but made by Bay Area local Blake Joffe of Beauty’s Bagel Shop—with more than just the requisite flour and water. If all it takes is a little sea salt and olive oil to enhance matzo’s typically dry-mouth taste, then I vote for a minor overhaul of tradition.

  Still, this was a legit Seder. Everyone had a photocopy of a Haggadah, the book of prayers, songs, and biblical tales that recount the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt and freedom from slavery.

  It’s a good story. But as a kid, taking turns around the table reading The. Entire. Freaking. Thing meant we didn’t eat for hours. I’d steal sprigs of parsley from the tabletop (long after we’d dipped it in the ritual salt water)—and sit, starving and bored as hell. Grandma’s dense-as-rocks matzo balls and gray, leather-tough brisket weren’t any prize. But by the time dinner was actually served, I would’ve eaten the jar of Heinz Chili Sauce she’d “seasoned” it with.

  “Tonight, we’re going to move through the Passover story pretty quickly,” announced Leo. “We’ve got eating to do!”Amen to that.

  And so it began: the explanation of the Seder plate, the Four Questions (typically, the youngest person at the table is charged with tone-deaf singing this integral part of the evening, but on this night, the lone tween was too shy; instead we were treated to a woman who actually had a beautiful voice), and the Ten Plagues, detailing Old World woes. By the festive song “Dayenu” (“Enough”), we’d lost count of glasses of wine and were all one big, happy family—singing, clapping, exchanging smiles. George turned to me and exclaimed: “I love this! I’m with my people!”

  Before we knew it, dinner was served, family-style: pickled heirloom carrots and Bull’s Blood beets. “Mock liver”—a mash of organic peas and Blue Lake beans. The prettiest, most perfectly pungent, handgrated fluorescent-fuchsia horseradish I’ve ever had. (Note to Wise Sons: Jar that stuff!) The soup was a clean, flavorful broth buoying matzo balls as God intended them to be: feather-light and fluffy. The gefilte fish was a custom-grind of carp and whitefish in a fennel-thyme fumet—a far cry from the congealed stuff in jars you see every season at the supermarket. And the brisket: not gray! Not tough! Just fork-tender shreds of peppery sweet meat.

  Three hours later, when we were down to the last sips of madeira, matched with a creamy, rich chocolate pot de crème (single-handedly bringing Passover desserts back from the dead), there was laughter; career-advice-giving; gossip about embarrassing wedding toasts and bad breakups involving people we didn’t know. No barking between relatives or help-clear-the-table mandates from Mom. But hugs good-bye. And sincere cries of “Next Year—with Wise Sons!”

  THE 2011 DYKE MARCH WIENER TASTE TEST

  By Bethany Jean Clement

  From The Stranger

  The Fourth of July: The iconic American holiday, made for parades, fireworks, and cooking hot dogs on the grill. Seattle’s wacky spin on this tradition is perfect fodder for The Stranger managing editor Bethany Jean Clement’s subversive, droll restaurant review style.

  And so we come to Independence Day, when Americans turn to thoughts of wieners.

  Fact (according to a press release received by The Stranger last week about something called “Grillebration,” which sounds like an emergency room procedure): Our countrypeople will enjoy seven billion hot dogs between Memorial Day and Labor Day. On July 4th, we will engulf more than 150 million of them. One hundred and fifty million hot dogs: We must all do our part. So as a public service in advance of your patriotic barbecue, we present the 2011 Dyke March Wiener Taste Test.

  For the purposes of the test, three representative weenies were selected. (We shall set aside the veggie dogs as a dangerous fringe element.) First, the low: the bottom-shelf supermarket dog. When I was a child, we were fed Bar-S—containing, among other things, unspecified tidbits of pork and beef and mechanically separated chicken, as well as corn syrup (2 percent or less of the latter, the label hastens to reassure).While among a certain set nowadays, serving kids Bar-S would get you reported to Child Protective Services, it claims to be the number-one-selling hot dog in America (with the dubious corollary claim “Only the best is branded Bar-S”). Interpreting the runes on my supermarket receipt, it appears that last Saturday, a package of Bar-S Classic Franks was on special for just one dollar. That’s 12 cents per dog. TWELVE CENTS. Is this a great country or what? (Or what.)

  Then there is what might arguably be called the middle way: Hebrew National, the kosher frank that brags about being all beef (unspecified “premium cuts,” riiiight), with no artificial flavors or fillers (animated buns on the website wave protest-style signs about this). It’s worth noting, however, that Hebrew National—just like Bar-S—contains 2-percent-or-less of four kinds of sodiums, including our friend nitrate. Furthermore, while Hebrew National touts its “humble beginnings in New York City’s turn-of-the-century immigrant neighborhoods,” it is now a subsidiary of food giant ConAgra, the Wikipedia page of which—with allegations of environmental irresponsibility, labor issues, health violations, salmonella and E. coli–related product recalls, and delicious, delicious more—truly merits all Americans’ attention. The price of Hebrew National beef franks at QFC last Saturday: just about 43 cents each.

  Last but not least, and just in time for the taste test, Seattle has a brand-new high-class dog: Rain Shadow Meats’ house-made wieners. When I phoned the all-local-meats Capitol Hill butcher to inquire what they sold that was most like a hot dog, they reported that after extensive research and development, they’d just debuted their own—just like a regular hot dog, but made with reduced-guilt-and-ick-factor Carlton Farms pork, Painted Hills beef, “a little bit of ham,” and a proprietary spice blend, all inside a lamb casing. Rain Shadow proprietor and great-name-haver Russ Flint said that while he only eats a hot dog once in a blue moon (which is really how often you should be eating a hot dog, America), the people deserve a high-quality option. Rain Shadow’s wieners are peachy-colored and pornographically large in both length and girth; they’re about a quarter-pound each. Uncooked, they are redolent of traditional baloney. At $6.99 a pound, each weenie will run you about $1.65.

  The obvious time to conduct the taste test, as a celebration of all things U.S. of A., was during a friend’s annual barbecue along the route of the Seattle Dyke March last Saturday. A gas grill was fired up on the sidewalk; the three kinds of weenies were cooked until nice and hot, with good grill-markage (except the Bar-S, which due to an unforeseen grill hot spot obtained an all-over char to which no one objected). The dogs were ensconced in cheap, squishy buns (the only proper hot-dog conveyance, no matter what Macrina Bakery may offer). The smaller dogs were cut into halves and the Rain Shadow behemoths cut into thirds, as no one in their right mind wants to eat
three entire hot dogs; ketchup and yellow mustard were made available, though if utilized, had to be applied to all three samples for test consistency. The dogs were fed, unidentified, to study participants (though without actual blindfolding, as that seemed too complicated). Now: the results.

  Bar-S Classic Frank: Most test subjects were administered this weenie first, and the general consensus was that, lacking any basis for comparison, it was completely adequate if “not exciting” (Ben K., attorney). One subject pronounced it “an all-American, delicious hot dog” (sound engineer and education coordinator Jeffery). Small-business-owner Greg theorized that, due to its highly processed look and squishy consistency, the Bar-S sample might be a veggie dog; upon sampling, however, he said, “It tastes like it’s real meat.” His hypothesis briefly spread, leading Toshi (artist) to say that the dog “looked fake . . . I don’t feel like it’s meat.” Zac (another artist) reported simply, “It tastes like a hot dog, straight-up.” Greg, with the gimlet eye of a capitalist, offered the only real condemnation: “If these were your hot dogs, I wouldn’t invest in your business.”

  Hebrew National Kosher Frank: Several test subjects whose parents were less skinflinty than mine identified this as the taste of childhood. Ben K. got a bit misty-eyed, saying, “It’s reminiscent of the classic hot dogs of my youth.” It was judged less squishy than Bar-S, as well as saltier; “Salty-delicious,” said Sara (arts administrator), while another subject (me, not blind, but whatever) felt it was oversalted (and I like salt). Upon visual inspection, Greg pronounced this dog to have the appearance of real meat; after tasting, it was judged to have better flavor, “a little smoky—good texture—I’m impressed.” Jeffery cannily identified it as a kosher dog. “It’s real good,” he said succinctly.