Chef Fowke

What was the result of this investigation? Am I living close to the source, yet in a region that claims to have no decent deli food? I had a nice pastrami sandwich at Persimmon, in Seattle, recently - even though they put mayo on it!!! three dozen oyster, local brewed beer...apps at Brooklyn, a martini at Oceanaire, dinner at the Palace Kitchen.... Oh yeah, I went to Seattle for a reason. I missed the tour of the pastrami shop, maybe Irwin can help us with this topic.

This just proves that we all need to get out and eat more pastrami before this dying art is completely gone!

But the average moron is not concerned about poisoning a customer and getting slapped with a multi-million dollar lawsuit. What is the cost to these corporations to protect the safety of their consumer?

I am amazed. What a great course. I cannot believe the photos! Congratulations to everyone who is baking sourdough with such success! It is an art that takes time and patients to master. The photos of the bread are very appetizing. I wish my bread at the restaurant always looked that good. We are using a five-year-old starter (started with the yeast off of fresh grapes from Napa) and the bread is worth the effort. Bakers are worth there weight in gold. I am so pleased when I see the faces of my customers when they first bite into the bread! Keep up the hard work on this bread project. It is brilliant (it took my professional baker six months to master his starter

Try putting a bouquet garni in with the chicken bones wrapped in cheesecloth for more flavour. PS I will state again, nothing replaces a really well made stock. This is just a quick time saver that is better then using bouillon cubes or canned stock.

.....note: I am not saying all Hawaiians are over weight!

My wife grew up in Hawaii and her brothers to this day talk about and make plate lunch for themselves. As a true howlie I do not fully get it. Two of my wife's brothers compete at an Olympic level in water sports and eat the stuff religiously. They make it everyday at home and look for it every time they go out. I eat salads and fresh foods everyday and could lose 20 pounds. They eat this starchy stuff and would be lucky to have a combined body fat of 8%!! I know that a lot of local Hawaiians fight with a weight problem from the excess fat/carbs in there diet. My main question would be is why did they adopt such a cuisine? Hawaii is a tropical paradise with a diverse selection of beautiful fruits, vegetables and seafood.

Just a suggestion.... Even though the lamb from Washington State, NY State, Ontario, the Canadian Prairies and British Columbia have not been marketed as well as the NZ and Australian lamb it is far superior and often at a lower price. NZ lamb is the McD's of lamb in the world (sorry in advance to everyone from down under). It is mass-produced. Hopefully you can find some NY state lamb in your local butcher shop. You will find the lamb has better marbling and a more pronounced lamb flavor. Ask your butcher to leave the fat cap on the lamb rack and cut it off after the lamb has roasted. The lamb will be the most tender and flavorful you have ever had!

In reality, the more relaxed an animal is before you kill it the better it tastes. The best cattle in France are hand killed. The butcher walks into the field and slowly approaches the steer. He pets the animal and makes it feel comfortable before he quickly slits it throat. This reduces the release of hormones into the flesh and preserves the tenderness of the meats. On a sidebar.... anyone who has gone tuna fishing can tell you of the 'high' you get from eating raw tuna right after it is caught. Because of the fight the meat is full of adrenaline...fun for the first ten minutes but your heart gets tired very quickly!

I just assumed that the drop in quality of the hamburgers at Burger King and McDonalds was due to stricter enforcement of Haccp. The liability of serving a burger that makes a customer sick is so great that it is better, corporately, to serve a customer a burger with no flavour (cooked to death and held at a high temperature or eradiated) instead of risking illness and serving food that is 100% pure (editable) beef cooked to medium rare and tasting good.

I have never even thought about why I weigh down food after I have cured/smoked it. I just always have. Smoked salmon, gravalax, cured duck are all finished by applying weight to them for 24 hours... I am going to make an educated guess at the reason for this technique. I imagine it is to press down any swelling, at the molecular level, of the cells in the protein. A lot of osmosis and reverse osmosis occurs when you are curing a protein and this leads to excess, unwanted moisture diluting the final product. And you are right, the smoke flavour is reduced after steaming, but the meat was smoked for eight hours! The flavour remaining was in the right balance for the pastrami. The weight would also cause friction, again at the molecular level that would help in the 'cooking' (curing) of the meat. I have tried to slice a piece of gravalax that was improperly cured and it was slightly mushy and soggy. I also tried my first pastrami this year right out of the steamer and it was full of water. After it sat overnight (under weight) it was firm and moist. With the excess water removed the fat content was the primary moisture in the meat and it produced a very appealing textural experience in the mouth.

I can give you a quick and dirty answer.... I prefer corned beef (just smoked brisket) better if I am eating it as a main course (as part of a mixed grill with Salt Spring Island lamb, veal kidneys, Provimi veal liver and Marquez sausage) with some sauerkraut, roasted Dijon-thyme fingering potatoes, etc on a hot summers day in the backyard with a bucket of Kronbergs. In a sandwich the pastrami wins. It is partly a textural thing. The pastrami melding with the mustard and rye bread is a perfect combination. All the flavours round (average) out into one of the great flavours on this earth.

The Chanterelle mushrooms on Vancouver Island our out and beautiful this year. I just got in ten pounds and they were dry with a beautiful, pungent aroma! The West Coast Sockeye Salmon run is over for the year but I have seen an abundance of smoked salmon in the markets lately. It is so mild with a buttery texture that it would go perfectly the Pinot and not overpower the next course. And rack, leg or sirloin of lamb from BC are now readily available across North American and they would be perfect. If you are going to be drinking West Coast Pinot I would recommend a West Coast lamb raised on Salt Spring Island. It might be too big of an obstacle to procure these products but it would be really cool to serve a wine and food all from the same region... (the cheese from David Woods on Salt Spring Island are amazing as well)

On the first few pieces of brisket I prepared for this experiment (in August) I trimmed, cut and removed as much fat as I could. The end result was very lean. After reading previous messages (fatguy, etc) I wanted to keep all the fat on this piece of meat to see what the end result would be. I expected it to be greasy. It wasn't because of the dry curing. The salt pulled a lot of moisture out of the meat and the fat cap. When the meat was smoking I watched it render the fat cap and continually baste the meat for eight hours with pure, clear oil that exuded the smells of coriander, peppercorns and cloves! The meat turned out extremely moist and tender. As well, my smoker and steamer, at work, are used to cook tender pieces of meat, poultry and fish quickly at an extremely high heat to preserve the flavour and tenderness. The amount of steam coming out was probably 100 times what is usually used in the preparation of pastrami causing excess swelling with extra moisture being forced into the tissue. For the actual serving of the pastrami I split the meat right down the fat line and produced two pastramis. The fat content (comparing with Schwartz’s) was a medium. And we sold out in one lunch, the whole pastrami gone! It will make its debut next Wednesday lunch on the al a carte menu.

I am a now a web tech! Posted two images in a row that seemed to work! Now you’re all in trouble, all my future threads will be laden with photos, images and graphics!

I went down this week to Seattle to see Wesza (Irwin) to get some advice on a new project I am working on. He gave me a bottle of Nathan's 'The Original Coney Island' Deli Style Mustard! Yum! The first bottle is empty... The mustard is also very important in the success of a great pastrami sandwich. I also like when the coleslaw is served in the middle of the sandwich.

I think I understand how this works. Sorry for the delay, it has been many years since college and I have been immersed in a kitchen for the last eighteen! Here is a photo of the dry cured beef (pastrami) after smoking and steaming:

The Flats in Cleveland... What a great part of the world for a night out. Huge deversity in restaurants and bars. Great food, great clubs and those water taxis!! When the fun is drawing to an end a little shop opens (11pm - 4am) that serves baguette sandwiches filled with whatever type of cold cut you can imagine, mayonaise, onions, sour cream and about a pound of french fries(yes, the french fries are in the sandwich). The counterguy presses the whole sandwich down and for $7 you are eatting the greasiest drunken meal known to man!! I only had it once but I still dream of going back to Cleveland.

Recipe for Dry Curing Brisket/Plate into Pastrami. With a mortar and pestle (or a coffee grinder) grind the following to a course texture: 1. 3lbs course kosher salt 2. 2lbs peppercorns 3. ½lbs sugar 4. ½lbs coriander seeds 5. 3 Tbs whole cloves 6. 10 whole bay laurel leaves 7. 2 Tbs saltpeter Rub a 7lbs plate with raw garlic then coat with salt mixture. Let sit, covered, in the cooler for three days. Turn it over every 12 hours. Rinse the meat under cold running water for 5 minutes and remove all the surface salt mixture. Let it soak in fresh water (change the water every half hour) for 3 hours. Coat the meat with two parts cracked black peppercorns and one part cracked coriander seeds. Press the mixture into the meat. Weight it down and place in the cooler for eight hours. Smoke (cherrywood) over medium-low heat for eight hours or until the internal temperature reaches 165f. Immediately weight the meat down and let cool for 24hours in the cooler. Steam the meat for three hours. Immediately weight the meat and let it cool for 24 hours in the cooler. Re-heat the meat in the steamer for half an hour. Slice and serve.

I can see the photo....Is anyone else not able to see the photo?

Is Les Halles (spelling?) on Crescent Street still open? My wife attended McGill for many years back in the early 90's and every special occasion was spent at this restaurant. The meals were great but the desserts is what made the experience; they were some of the best I have ever tried!

Very American Style Seafood and Chop House. We specialize in serving over 140 types of seafood, 40 types of oysters and a premium selection of steaks and chops seasonally selected over the year. Everything is simply prepared to preserve the natural flavours and freshness of the products. 90% of the product is locally grown and grilled over applewood or cherrywood. Take a look at the website. The design of the restaurant is awe-inspiring. It was designed around a turn of the century San Francisco style Chop House. Joe Fortes Seafood and Chop House, Vancouver Canada. The posted picture is of the new dry cured pastrami just out of the steamer (its actually only half of it...I chose the fattiest part for Fatguy to see!).

It is very rare that I come across a method in cooking that actually saves time and produces a better product. The dry curing of the beef took less then a week from initial curing to smoking and steaming. The fat content seems to have been rendered better in the curing process. As I watched the meat smoke the fat seemed to be thicker and coated the beef more evenly. The taste of the cure and smoke are more predominate throughout the beef. When I took the meat out of the dry brine I nearly threw it away. It looked really abused... Today I tried it and I would confirm, officially, that the dry curing (one week) beats the wet cure (one month) in every category of taste, colour and texture. All meat used for both tests came from 'AAA' Alberta beef brisket or plate that had been wet aged for 14 days. Tomorrow my Sous Chef, Jason is going to test kitchen it to customers to see if it holds up to the rigors of service. The customer will make the final decision whether this product will make it to the menu this fall.

Yes, agreed. I was trying to, unclearly obviously, give another alternative to making a big stock at home. I find it cumbersome to make stocks at home. In an industrial kitchen it is second nature and there is always three or four different stocks and sauces simmering... At home I use the chicken-bones-in-cheesecloth trick to speed up the process and reduce the mess ( I do not have four Sous Chefs at home prepping and cleaning for me). The reality is there is no substitution for a great stock when making soups and sauces. If you have the time, space and patience take the time and do it right.

I order saltpeter through my meat supplier, Trimpac. I have also seen it being sold in Drug stores.