Pawaru-Grahmata

№ 19II. nodaļa

Vēršu gaļa

Beef à la daube in its own jelly

  • Serves 8 as a cold dish
  • 4–5 days' marinating, about 4 hours' cooking, overnight setting
  • Melnraksts · vēl nav izmēģināts

1796Wehrschu-galla.

Modernizētslpp. 62–63 · PDF 76–77
8 porcijas

The book gives 8 or 10 mārciņas of boneless beef, a good handful each of currants, juniper berries and dill, vinegar almost to cover, and 8 days in the vinegar, which converts to 3.35–4.2 kg of beef. We use 1.5 kg, about two fifths.

Method

8 soļi
  1. Beat the beef all over with a meat mallet, then rub it with the fine salt. With a thin pointed knife, stab deep holes all over it, about 4 cm apart.
  2. Rinse the currants and pat them dry with a cloth. Pound them in a mortar with the ginger, pepper, nutmeg and cloves to a coarse paste, and push it into the holes.
  3. Put the beef in a glass, ceramic or stainless-steel container in which it fits snugly. Add the juniper, salt and dill and pour on the diluted vinegar until the meat is almost covered. Cover and refrigerate for 4–5 days, turning the beef once a day.
  4. Lift the beef out and pat it dry. Lard it with the fat strips, using a larding needle or deep slits.
  5. Strain the marinade through muslin. Measure half of it (about 375 ml) and add the same amount of water.
  6. Put the beef and the pig's trotter in a heavy casserole with a tight lid and pour the liquid over. Bring to the boil, then cover and cook at a bare simmer on the hob, or in the oven at 150 °C, for 3–3½ hours, until very tender.
  7. Lift the beef into a deep dish (discard the trotter). Skim the fat off the liquid and strain it over the meat. If you're using gelatine instead, soak the sheets in cold water, squeeze them out and stir them into the hot liquid before straining.
  8. Let it cool, then refrigerate overnight, within 2 hours of cooking. To serve, slice the cold beef, cut the jelly into pieces and arrange it around and on top. It keeps for 3 days in the fridge.

Notes

What the book says vs. what we added

the book beats boneless beef from the leg, rubs it with salt, stabs holes and stuffs them with currants pounded with ginger, pepper, nutmeg and cloves. It lies in a tight pot with juniper, salt and dill under vinegar for 8 days, turned daily, is larded with fat bacon and braised slowly in an iron pot with half the strained vinegar and as much water. Then it is put in a stoneware dish with the strained liquid poured over, and served cold with the jelly cut up around and on top. The amounts, the dilution, the trotter or gelatine and the times are ours.

Marinating

the book's 8 days were presumably in a cold cellar. We keep the meat in the fridge at 4 °C or below and stop at 5 days; after that the vinegar softens the outside too much.

Vinegar

18th-century vinegars were often milder than today's wine vinegar (6–7 % acid), so we dilute it by a third. The braising liquid is then half marinade, half water, as in the book.

Jelly

lean, boneless leg meat gives little gelatine, so the liquid may not set firmly on its own. A pig's trotter or calf's foot in the pot, or gelatine stirred in at the end, makes sure it does.

Currants in the holes are unusual today but were a common sweet note in Baltic German braises. The book's word for the spice mixture is zāles.

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