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Saturday, October 05, 2002

Meat in pastry, South Africa, free association, here's more.... Samoosas This recipe was brought to South Africa by Indian immigrants and has now become a favourite snack of all South Africans. Dough 375 g cake flour 5 ml salt 250 ml cold water 5 ml lemon juice 15 ml melted butter or margarine Filling 500 g mutton or lamb, minced 2 ml turmeric 5 ml salt 1 large clove garlic 1 piece root ginger 10 ml freshly chopped coriander leaves 1 green chilli, crushed 2 medium onions, finely chopped 15 ml melted butter 4 spring onions, finely chopped 2 ml garam masala sunflower oil To make the dough, sift the flour and salt together and add enough cold water to make a stiff dough. Add the lemon juice and knead the dough gently until elastic. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and roll each into a ball. Roll out 6 balls on a floured surface and shape them into 10-cm diameter rounds. Brush each with melted butter or oil and sprinkle with flour. Stack the rounds leaving the final round ungreased and unfloured. Roll out the stack into a large, very thin, round and trim the sides to form a square. Heat an ungreased baking sheet in the oven at 230 C until very hot, remove and place the dough square on it. Turn the square over several times until the dough puffs up slightly. Remove the square from the baking sheet as soon as this happens. Repeat for the remaining 6 balls of dough. To make the filling, cook the meat with a mixture of the turmeric, salt, garlic and ginger pounded together, the coriander leaves, and the chillies. When nearly dry, add the onions and cook till the liquid has evaporated stirring often to prevent lumps forming. Add the melted butter and allow the mixture to cool and add the spring onion and garam masala. To assemble, cut the prepared dough squares into strips 8 cm wide and 25 to 30 cm long. Separate into layers before the pastry cools. Cover with a damp cloth to prevent drying out while making the samoosas). Holding a strip of pastry in your left hand pull the bottom corners across then fold it up to form as triangle with sharp corners and a pocket in which to put the filling. Fill with 10 ml filling then continue folding the pastry across the top of the triangle to seal off the opening. Tuck the edges round to form a neat triangle. Seal the remaining edge with a paste of flour and water and pinch the two bottom edges lightly together. Leave in a cool place for about 30 minutes before cooking. Fry the samoosas in hot oil for about 10 minutes, or until golden, turning often. Remove and drain.     6:59:55 AM    comment []

Meet Kel, inventor of the biltong box.   Biltong. It sounds even more amusing translated to English. “Bil” means butt and “tong” means “slice”. Sausage geeks know their butts are important if the wurst is going to happen. Pork butts (which come from the pig shoulders BTW) are the cut of choice for many sausage recipes, being the perfect mix of meat and fat. So, we don’t mind being the, uh, object of immature jokes when we request these cuts at the meat counter (Infantile butchers! – “Okay, please move to the rear of the line…” is not funny, they don’t know humor from a hole in the ground beef.)  So, when confronted with the idea we’re making butt slices, it’s not a disaster.   When I first heard of biltong, I was checking out jerky recipes. I’d guessed jerky originated from the same Indian sources that gave us expressions like Jerk and possibly barbeque. (JERK: This method of cooking pork and chicken dates back to the Carib-Arawak Indians who inhabited Jamaica. After capturing an animal and thoroughly cleaning and gutting it, the Indians placed it in a deep pit lined with stones and covered with green wood, which, when burned, would smoke heavily and add to the flavor). Charqui (American Spanish, from Quechua ch'arki) is the source of the English word for jerky. The sounds are similar enough to make a case for common origin, but it doesn’t make biltong.   Do not even think of comparing biltong to "beef jerky". That’s the first thing you learn.   Next thing is the garam masala, which will delight your nostrils with the sweet aroma of freshly roasted coriander. It’s best to make your own just for that, but you can buy it already powdered for seasoning meats that will be dried anyway. After a lame first attempt to make biltong, I went back to making jerky, but included garam masala along with soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. The result was spectacular, but it was not biltong.   Sauce for the goose, sauce for the Gandhi. Coriander almost certainly made its way to South Africa with indentured servants from India. Indian spices end up in recipes everywhere they are transplanted. English cooking (“Lord, have mercy on the people in England. For the terrible food these people must eat” – Frank Zappa, Strictly Genteel) is renowned for blandness, so it’s no surprise that Indian food now dominates London’s culinary landscape. It’s only natural to adopt better food, if not the people who brought it. Still, biltong predates the Indian diaspora.   OT: “Whatever the causes, the defeat at Isandhlwana proved to the British that their "pre-emptive strike" into Zululand in at tempt <sic> to break up the increasingly powerful army of King Cetesweyo would demand much greater commitment than they previously had supposed.”   I’ve never tasted real South African biltong, but plan to order some soon. All the recipes I’ve tried making end up being gawk-salty. The first step in the process is a koshering, coating the thick beef strips with rock salt to draw out liquid. As in brining, timing must be everything. I can’t believe anyone could develop the deep affection South Africans have for biltong if it’s like licking a salt block.   Not only can you make your own BILTONG but also that other delicacy so many ex-patriates miss so much......... DROE WORS!!! One day in the spring of 2001, I got an email from biltongmakers.com, who must have been data-mining the net for hungry Afrikaaners. I’d documented my biltong quest on rec.food.preserving and they found me too. I ordered a biltong box and some spices from them, for about $US 60 total. The order took about 6 weeks to arrive. It’s simple, a metal box, enameled white, with thermal wire criss-crossed below a perforated plate at the bottom and notches along the top for skewers. First thing I had to do was remove the SA 3-prong plug and replace it with an American one (you can order 110V or 220V, but the plug will still be wrong). There were no settings to make, no knobs, no dials. I plugged it in and let it reach equilibrium, which was a temperature around 98 Fahrenheit, just like me. There is no circulation other than convection, so strips of meat will dry out more quickly at the bottom. Since the drying process takes 3 to 4 days, the strips have to be removed from the skewers and inverted if you want consistency. In humid conditions, mold is likely. It does keep the flies off (supposedly the original reason for a vinegar marinade). This appears to be the salient feature of the biltong box, nearly every recipe at biltongmakers ends with this cheerful caveat: In the BILTONG MAKER it will take 3-4 days to dry. Under the rafters it will take longer and watch out for the flies! It may sound like I’m slammin’ ‘em. I’m not. There is a charm on the website that overcomes all its shortcomings (including the plethora of browser instances). The recipes and history there make it all worthwhile. For anyone who can taste a recipe by reading it, here is one from John Kinsella. Most recipes substitute London Broil for the venison. I have some problems with it. There is no vinegar. I can't imagine biltong on a burger or in quiche. 8 hours is not long enough to dry strips of beef that start out 1/2-inch thick, though this recipe does not specify thickness. "Mixed Spices" is vague, though it almost certainly means garam masala. This one looks better. If you want to make biltong muffins, look here. 5:02:20 AM    comment []