SC - Holidays, Lurking, Gifts, Etc.

[Luanne Cupp Bartholomew]

Diana wrote:
> 
> I've been asked by a friend if I could search out a recipe for Roumanian
> skirt steak.  Is anyone on this list familiar with a recipe, period or not?
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> Diana d'Avignon

Heh. Eh heh heh. Heh.

I'm sorry, I looked all over the place for about a year for a recipe for
this, and so far the closest I could come was one I tinkered with
myself, the closest approximation I could devise to the Roumanian
tenderloin [skirt] steak at Sammy Roumanian restaurant on, I think,
Allen Street in downtown Manhattan. I'm pretty sure they're the ones who
either invented it or made it semi-famous. Sammy's serves either skirt
steak or actual tenderloin this way, and while the ingredients are more
or less Rumanian, I think it's a product more of the cuisine of
Roumanian Jews who immigrated to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th
century. Sammy's has been making this stuff for about that long, too.

Quantities are variable... 

Place your skirt steak (or tenderloin, but I think it's some kind of
Lower-East-Side-of-New-York joke to refer to skirt, at one time just
about the cheapest piece of beef you could get in one piece, as
"Roumanian tenderloin") in a large Ziploc bag big enough to hold it, and
then some.

Add: the juice of one or two lemons
1 Tbs. vegetable or olive oil
three or four crushed garlic cloves
two tablespoons Noble Rose Sweet Paprika
~1/2 tsp dried oregano, or equivalent in fresh oregano
Salt and pepper to taste (do not sneer and omit the salt unless you have
specific medical instructions; Sammy's food is _supposed_ to be bad for you)
Optional but highly recommended: a tiny, tiny pinch of monosodium glutemate

Marinate overnight, but not for too long, as excess marination (say,
more than 48 hours) seems to dry and toughen the meat. Saute the meat in
beef, goose or chicken fat, or broil, or grill over charcoal. Do not
cook it to well-done, or your dreams will be haunted by all manner of
bad things out of the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Medium to
medium-well, at most. Burnt paprika doesn't taste good, anyway.

Serve with home-fried potatoes, a rosti-variant that can be made from
either raw or boiled potatoes, in this case sauteed in everyone's
favorite cooking medium, rendered poultry fat. Assorted pickles help,
too. See your doctor shortly after eating this dish at Sammy's, just in
case. They have schmear and grebens for every table, you see, and the
rest of the tone of the average Sammy's meal just sort of follows from
that point. Appropriate beverages range from hot tea to red wine on up
to semi-frozen vodka.   
  
Hope this does it...

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com