So, after the boost to my cooking mojo from last week\u2019s Culinary Symposium, I thought I needed to capitalize on that and play with the Transylvanian cookbook this weekend. \u00a0The two recipes for \u201cvetrece\u201d caught my eye just now.<\/p>\n
Tenth. BEEF VETRECE WITH BREAD<\/em><\/p>\n Salt the beef and smoke it. Don’t leave it for too long on the smoke, cook it only when about to serve it. When serving it, pour some beef broth on top the bread and slice some onions.<\/em><\/p>\n Thirteenth. Toasted vetrece.<\/em><\/p>\n Put it into very hot water, leave it for some time, and after its blood is drained take it out, wait for the water to drain then add some salt. Let it stand for three days, and smoke it on the third day. You can toast it outside if you have no smoke. Do the same with the roast garlic beef. If you want to cook this for lunch, prepare the meat at the evening [before], add some salt, smoke it and leave it for a day. When you want to cook it, slice it into pieces. If you’re cooking for a lord, put it into clean and hot water and pour the water into a different pot. Pass the broth through a strainer. When it’s about half done, slice some onions into it and add some parsley roots. Add some vinegar when the onion is about to be cooked. When serving it, this should be the first course. If you want to cook beef vetrece, don’t slice onions onto the bread, for not everyone likes it. When cooking the vetrece, peel two to three garlic cloves and break them.<\/em><\/p>\n When the vetrece is cooked, pour beef broth on top the garlic. When they’re together, shake it. Pour them together and serve it to your lord however he likes it.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It helps to know a vetrece is meat cut into thin strips, like noodles made of meat. \u00a0I\u2019ve come across a reference that implies a vetrece is an ancestor of the classic beef paprikash.<\/p>\n So, let\u2019s look at these, hmmm? The first one reads to me like you take salted beef, and smoke it for a bit. \u00a0Since cooking it is mentioned as another step, I would guess you\u2019re not cooking by smoking. \u00a0It mentions beef broth, I might think you simmer the salted, smoked beef, put the beef on the bread with sliced onions, and pour the broth over. \u00a0The Transylvanians loved their broth!<\/p>\n Okay, this is doable. \u00a0I can get beef, I have salt, onions and bread, and I have a smoker rig. \u00a0Since the recipe seems to call for smoking and then cooking, I\u2019ll go for cold smoking. \u00a0The only problem is deciding is…is this beef that has been salted, you know, for flavor, or is it SALT BEEF, as in beef preserved with salt? \u00a0A number of times in the cookbook, we find \u201csalted X\u201d is meant to be preserved, such as salted gooseberries. \u00a0Other times we have instructions to knock salt off foods, which seems to me to indicate LOTS of salt, again, as you might used for preserved ingredients. \u00a0This lack of specialized language can be tricky.<\/p>\n The toasted vetrece looks more complex. \u00a0It specifies beef that is purged of blood and is salted, then smoked for a whole day. \u00a0You then simmer it, straining out the meat when it\u2019s half-cooked. \u00a0Cook sliced onions and the ever-popular parsley roots in the broth, adding vinegar when the onions are done. \u00a0It also warns us not to put the onions directly on the bread that of course wasn\u2019t mentioned previously, and that the beef broth should be poured over chopped garlic, and shaken to mix.<\/p>\n So, this one is also doable, but with a longer timeframe. \u00a0The meat you get in the grocery store is already pretty well purged of blood. \u00a0Parsley roots are not generally easy to find. \u00a0I\u2019ve tried them (Thank you, Berkeley Bowl!), and they taste like carrots or mild parsnips, with a strong flavor of…parsley. \u00a0To replicate this, I\u2019d use small parsnips peeled and simmered with a big bundle of parsley stems tied together to make removing them easier. \u00a0Vinegar would most likely be white wine vinegar (Transylvania had lots of white wine on hand). \u00a0Onions…well, I\u2019m not sure what variety of onion they had, so I\u2019ll just go with the common yellows I have in the pantry. \u00a0And if I find out later what kinds of onions are common to the region, I\u2019ll let us all know.<\/p>\n Nice of our author to tell us to serve it how our lord likes it. \u00a0For me, I\u2019d take it with the sliced meat on the bread, veggies (with onions!) on top, and some broth to moisten the bread and to sip. \u00a0But that\u2019s me. \u00a0Okay, grocery run tomorrow! \u00a0Let\u2019s see how this works! \u00a0I\u2019ll probsbly do the first one with less preserved meat, though with veggies from the second\u2014I don\u2019t have all day to smoke the meat.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So, after the boost to my cooking mojo from last week\u2019s Culinary Symposium, I thought I needed to capitalize on that and play with the Transylvanian cookbook this weekend. \u00a0The two recipes for \u201cvetrece\u201d caught my eye just now. Tenth. BEEF VETRECE WITH BREAD Salt …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9,3,6],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medieval-cooking","tag-cooking","tag-sca","tag-transylvanian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}