This is Challenge 3 of the Charcutepalooza fun. This has taken over my life. I swear. It has me doing all kinds of weird things BESIDES the meat stuff.
It has me charting the pig for a project I am making. It has me thinking up ideas of what I can do next. I have to say that I was already going to make a tongue when this challenge came along. I had a tongue in my freezer from a local farm. I had gotten this tongue at a farmers market a couple of weeks before this challenge was announced. So, we went with corning the tongue.
I will spare you the pictures of the corning of the tongue. Besides they were already posted on here. So, what was I going to do with tongue? I wanted to do something a little different.
Since I had the tongue already, I cooked potatoes with the tongue to brown it all up. Then I did what was natural to do. I made Corned Tongue Hash.
I put an egg on it! It was awesome tongue hash. But WAIT there is MORE! There was no way that I would let any challenge that included Pastrami go by without partaking in it. Pastrami and I go way way back. It has really been a thread that has woven through my life.
After the brine it went into the smoker. I have to give it to Dr. Food that he put that smoker together and took it outside in the snow to do this. He also had bronchitis at the time and is a real Palooza trooper. I love the word trooper... Sounds like something that Lucy or Ethel might say. Ok Fred lets move on.
Back to Pastrami. Deli's have always been in my life. I come from a Jewish family so of course they do. Some of my earliest memories were having pastrami at a Deli near my house in Culver City, California. It was called "Roll N Rye" MY kids grew up going there.
Hey Evie... You are in your Roll and Rye shirt holding a chicken. Mommy loves you. **Waving to Evan when he was little**
There was the trip to Mecca (well Katz Deli, same thing) for a Pastrami sandwich. My sis and I almost cried when we tasted this. I think there were tears in Dr Foods eyes too.
So we made our pastrami. I decided that I would make a rye bread too.
Ok, and so we needed some coleslaw to go with it and I whipped up some of that.
I started saurkraut a couple of weeks before but Dr. Food said he wouldn't eat it because he was leaving for India the next day and if it made him SICK it wouldn't be good. Sick? Ha! He doesn't know my skills.
And now boys and girls comes the part of the post where I get really personal with all of you. Most my real friends (wait, that didn't sound right) most my not pretend internet friends? Well, most my friends know this story. It is THE PASTRAMI story.
My mom either went away somewhere for a few days or was in the hospital getting her gall bladder out (Mom, didn't mean to get so personal about your missing body parts) anyhow, she told me to watch my dad and make sure that he had stuff to eat because he couldn't cook. I mean it. He made a mean ice coffee, but that was it, he could not cook. So, I told my mom (hi Mom) that I would have him over to eat and watch out for him. So one night I called to see what he was doing for dinner. We made plans to go out to dinner together. He sorta talked me into going to Johnnie's Pastrami another Culver City institution before Culver City got all hoity toitey My dad loved pastrami. He knew my mother didn't want him eating it because it wasn't good for him.
Anyhow, time goes by and sadly (more sadly than I could ever tell you here) my dad passed away. I thought *I* killed him. For a long time I thought that letting him talk me into that pastrami sandwich was what did it. Good thing when I finally confessed to my mother she laughed and laughed at me. So, to this day I love pastrami even more because I remember how much fun I had eating it behind my mothers back with my FATHER and we both thought we were being so sneaky.
I love you dad. This pastrami is for you!
Oh yeah, we also had fries. Sorry mom.
