Sweet and Sour Roast (Eisek Fleish)

Amarante

Thu, Dec 10 2020, 11:33 am

I guess I missed the memo in terms of this being the most famous Ashkenazi meat dish or maybe I don't remember eating it as a child. At any rate, it was a foggy day in Los Angeles and I thought why not have a nice stewy type of dish simmering away and smelling delicious so I decided to give it a shot.

After reading the recipe I decided to use stew meat so that it was somewhat like a beef stew without vegetables. I have made Sauerbraten which uses ginger snap cookies so using lekah as both a flavor and a thickener was a bit similar. Since I didn't have lekah, I subbed with pumpernickel and honey as recipe recommends. Since I LOVE pumpernickel with raisins this gave me an excuse to buy a LARGE loaf. As the recipe actually calls for plums and dates, I figured raisins added into the mx would be fine.

The notes from the author indicate that this is a Rosh Hoshanah tradition dish so I would imagine there would be honey cake (Lekah) around.

This was an okay version of a stew but I like my beef stew with vegetables as part of the recipe, I think this is a one and done. Very Happy

I did like the "voice" of the author especially since when she was advising on the best techniques for cooking without giving them a name - I.e. explaining why searing the meat without crowding is important and how to deglaze the pan although she calls the fond meat cracklings instead of fond. LOL

Reminded me of cooking with my Bubbe although my Bubbe would probably have used the glasses from the candles as her measurement tool for the wine. Very Happy

I did cool the meat so the fat was easier to remove since it solidifies. Also any kind of braised meat tastes better when reheated the next day to let the flavors marry.

Sweet and Sour Roast (Eisek Fleish)

Excerpt From: Miriam Gurov. “Gefilte Fish, Challah, Tzimmes and More: 20 Rosh Hashanah Recipes From My Israeli Cuisine (Kosher Cookbooks)

Oh, this is the most famous meat dish in Ashkenazi cuisine. It is traditionally served for Rosh Hashanah - we want the year to be kind and sweet. That's why we add honey and fruit to the meat. In the traditional version of this dish, we use dates and date honey. However, it’s been many centuries, and the pieces of honey cake - lekah - have been added to the eisek fleish. Sometimes, lekah is cooked long before the celebration for the sake of having a few pieces just to be used in cooking this dish. Dried lekah can also be used. For sweet and sour roasted meat, we take fairly fatty parts. Traditionally, Jews used brisket. Israeli butchers recommend asado, or even better, entrecote strips or veal ribs. Well, if you don’t like animal fat, then, take a low-fat chuck or tenderloin.

INGREDIENTS

3.5 pounds of beef - I used stew meat which is generally a cut of chuck
2 onions
2 cups of dry red wine
5 cloves of garlic
10 sprigs fresh dill weed
10 sprigs fresh parsley
10 fresh blue plums (if you didn’t find fresh ones, use dried prunes pre-soaked in boiling water, with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice) - I used prunes as I didn't have fresh plums
4 dates
½ pound of honey cake (lekah) (instead of lekah, you can use ½ pound of black rye bread and 2 tablespoons of honey) - I used raisin pumpernickel as I didn't have lekah
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
⅓ teaspoon of sweet paprika
1 cinnamon stick
Black pepper, according to taste

HOW TO COOK

1. Cut the meat across the fibers into portions. You can cut the meat into cubes, like for goulash.

2. Take a large saucepan with a thick bottom, pour some vegetable oil in it, and heat up the oil. Finely chop the onions, put them into the pan, and fry until the onions are browned. Remove the pan from the heat.

3. Take a large frying pan and fry the meat pieces on high heat. Don’t forget to turn each piece over so that the meat pieces become "closed" and the remaining meat juice is captured inside the meat. (It is better to fry the meat not all at once, but in two or three stages. If you put all the meat in the pan simultaneously, it won’t reach the necessary condition, but it will lose all the juice and be pale and with poor taste.) Put the fried meat in the saucepan onto the layer of onions.

4. Pour 2 glasses of wine into the frying pan and reduce the heat to medium. With a spatula, scrape the meat cracklings from the pan to mix with the wine. Bring it to a boil. Cook for two minutes and pour into the saucepan with the meat. Then put the saucepan on medium heat

5. Cut the garlic into pieces and add to the saucepan. Then add the paprika, cinnamon stick, and black pepper. Add 1-2 cups of boiling water so that the liquid covers the meat.

6. Drain and rinse the figs and remove the pits. Add the figs to the meat and stir. Put the dill and parsley in the pan in whole bunches. Cover with a lid and leave to simmer for two hours.

7. From time to time, you will have to check the level of liquid. There should be at least an inch of sauce left in the bottom of the pan. If there isn’t enough sauce, add some boiling water.

8. Break the lekah into small pieces or use finely crumbled black rye bread with honey instead. Next time, please find the lekah! I’ll check!

9. After two hours, carefully remove the bunches of dill and parsley from the pan with a fork and add the crumbled lekah to the sauce.

10. Now, you should stay alert and make sure that the meat doesn’t get burnt - stir it from time to time. After thirty minutes, try the meat and decide what to add: Salt? Honey? Pepper?

11. The meat should simmer for another half hour on very low heat. Sabbath mode can be very helpful here - it allows you to reach the desired temperature using the minimum heat of the electric stove.

12. Put the meat on the dish with a skimmer. The sauce is supposed to be strained through a sieve, but it is easier to grind it with a mash pusher. Reheat the sauce and serve it with the meat in a separate sauce pot.

13. When the meat is finished, we usually eat the remaining sauce with pleasure, dipping sweet challah in it and blissfully blinking. We did this when we were kids, and nobody told us that it was inappropriate. This was the taste of home. Our grandmothers whose memories we cherish would have been proud of us. Let us all have a sweet and delicious New Year!