The Cellar - Eating Sheep

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Lamb tacos? I never saw them while I was growing up, but it's not unheard of...

Way to hell'n'gone at the bottom of this page is a technique for making Turkish and middle-eastern pastirma, after a good deal of technical stuff about how to dry meat successfully. There's also one for biltong, if you've ever been on safari and Pemmican brand jerky just isn't doing it for you.

Exerpted:

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Pastirma

(Turkey, Egypt, Armenia)
Pastirma is salted and dried beef from not too young animals. In some areas camel meat is also used. The meat is taken from the hindquarters and is cut into 50 to 60 cm long strips with a diameter of not more than 5 cm. The strips are rubbed and covered with salt and nitrate. The dosage of the nitrate in relation to the meat is 0.02 percent, that means 2 g of nitrate for 10 kg of meat. Several incisions are made in the meat to facilitate salt penetration.

The salted meat strips are arranged in piles about 1 m high and kept for one day at room temperature. They are turned over, salted again, and stored in piles for another day. Thereafter the meat strips are washed and air-dried for two to three days in summer and for 15 to 20 days in winter. After drying the strips are piled up again to a height of 30 cm and pressed with heavy weights (approx. 1 tonne) for 12 hours. After another drying period of two to three days the meat pieces are again pressed for 12 hours. Finally the meat is again air-dried for 5 to 10 days.

After the salting and drying process, the entire surface of the meat is covered with a layer (3 to 5 mm thick) of a paste called cemen, which consists of 35 percent freshly ground garlic, 20 percent helba (i.e. ground trefoil seed), 6 percent hot red paprika, 2 percent mustard, and 37 percent water. Helba is used as a binder of the paste; the other ingredients are spices, but garlic is the most important as it is antimycotic. The meat strips covered with cemen are stored in piles for one day, and thereafter are dried for 5 to 12 days in a room with good air ventilation, after which the pastirma is ready for sale. Thus, the production of pastirma requires several weeks. However, not much energy is required since most of the salting and drying is done at room temperature. The final product has an average water activity (aw) of 0.88 (see Chapter 5). The aw should not fall below 0.85 or the meat will be too dry. The salt content should range between 4.5 and 6.0 percent. The product is mould-free for months at ambient temperature even in summer. Pastirma thus has a better microbiological stability than biltong.

Being strongly pressed would account for the monolithic structure of the stuff that I remember seeing. I'd order up about a hundred grams, the butcher would put some in the slicer and slice me off a lot of thin slices, and I'd take this bundle to the restaurant much frequented by Americans because the proprietor spoke fluent English -- he liked Louis L'Amour novels. They'd fry it up with eggs.

Other recipes for the spice paste rubbed on the surface of the meat, c-with-cedilla cemen pronounced cheh-men, give fenugreek instead of trefoil seed:

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Çemen is composed of crushed classical fenugreek seeds, garlic and chilli pepper mixed to a paste with a little water.

Lamb isn't that popular for tacos... generally it's beef, chicken, pork as carnitas (minced, shredded, sometimes fried sometimes stewed) very occasionally maybe goat, but this is preferred stewed, and Baja-style shrimp tacos, with shredded cabbage.

Growing up, we spent a lot of time with the family of a man with whom my father worked. This guy's wife was American-born but her family was from somewhere in the Middle east... I've forgotten now. But we used to eat lamb-burgers at their house all the time. They'd cook them like regular hamburgers, but we ate them in pita bread instead of on buns, and with their home-made yogurt as a condiment rather than ketchup/mustard/etc. They weren't bad... different, but not bad.

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Originally Posted by DucksNuts (Post 396895)

Glatt.....that pic is soooooooo gross

Imagine the picture if he liked fresh Soilent Green!

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Originally Posted by smurfalicious (Post 397058)

we used to eat lamb-burgers at their house all the time.

HM usually has some lamb & mint burgers in the freezer. They're okay, but if I am in a burger mood I'm usually craving beef... They're lovely and juicy though, because they're quite thick.

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Originally Posted by monster (Post 396794)

It's as easy to assume things that seem unlikely are old wives tales as it it to believe things that used to be true still are, especially when they happen in a different part of the world/don't happen in your part of the world.

True enough, but I guess at least wrt people in other countries eating different animals, it never occurred to me to doubt it. Maybe I'm just too gullible......

I've had roast lamb a few times - loved it. It is very expensive around here though and the roast aren't very big, so either have alot of extras or buy 2.

A few year back a local tavern had a cajun chef. I made a special request and had lamb jambalaya.

Went to the borough market today and bought, amongst other things, some lamb chops, King Edward spuds,fresh broad beans, still in their pods, a corn cob, fresh broccolli and fresh parsley. Already have the butter and mint sauce in. Good eating tonight:P

I'll be sure to cook plenty :P

HM had Hotpot tonight (a lamb stew with vegetables effectively). It did smell good, and was reduced to 70p but I sneakily checked the sleeve before putting it in the recycling bin - I was glad I had my cooked from scratch thick vegetable soup.

First on the ingredients list was water and sundry delights such as modified starch, glucose syrup, molasses and sugar followed. 11g of fat, of which 5g were saturated.

(but I will probably gas the cats tonight if they creep under the duvet)

I can't imagine buying a stew already cooked. Isn't the idea of a good stew that you can smell it cooking for hours before you get to eat it...meaning that by the time it's cooked the floor is slick with the saliva you've been dribbling all over the place?

Ali, is there anything else to beef stew Australian style besides ladling it out atop some hotcakes? I had it that way in Perth and concluded the Ozzies had some wild, weird, and wonderful ways with pancakes.