A Movie. Dripping Puddings. Smoked Meat...and a Vintage Menu.

Along with best wishes for a very happy holiday.

I’ve spent the last couple of years working on a film with director Laura Gabbert (she directed City of Gold, the wonderful movie about the late Jonathan Gold.) I’m very proud to announce that Food and Country will premiere at Sundance next month.

This was a passion project; when Covid hit I wondered how it would effect our food landscape. In March of 2020 I began Zooming with farmers, fishermen, ranchers and chefs as they struggled to survive. After fifty years of writing about food I thought I knew why we eat what we eat: it turns out I was wrong. As I got to know these extraordinary people I learned so much. More importantly, I was overwhelmed with both respect and affection. I’m pretty sure that you will be too.

The kitchenware aisles of thrift shops are like mini-museums celebrating the way we once ate. What was this dented copper mold used for? That rusty eggbeater? These old cast iron pans? Each time I come upon some old implement I begin researching recipes.

A few years ago I found an iron popover pan and became curious about popovers. They’re related to something called “A Dripping Pudding” whose first recorded recipe appeared in 1737 in The Whole Duty of a Woman. Eight years later Hannah Glasse published the recipe in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. She renamed it Yorkshire Pudding; nobody knows why. The name changed again in and American cookbook, Buckeye Cookery, which was first published in 1877: now called “Pop-Overs” they were, essentially, Dripping Puddings without the drippings.

Whatever you call them, popovers are one of the most satisfying recipes you can make. You put a flat modest batter into the oven and when you open the door you find fat, sassy puffs that have blown themselves up to be six inches tall.

The real secret to a fine popover is making sure that your pan is piping hot when you batter it up. That activates the alchemy and makes them rise to extraordinary heights.

If you add some meat drippings to the pan you’ll end up with Dripping Puddings. There’s no better friend to roast beef. 

Brown Butter Popovers (adapted from Fanny Farmer)

3 eggs
1 cup whole milk,
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
5 tablespoons butter, browned
butter or meat drippings for the pan

Gently beat the eggs and milk together until just blended. Add the salt. Incorporate the flour in a thin stream, whisking as you pour.  

Let the batter rest for a bit. If your batter is too cold when it hits the oven, your popovers will be less impressive.  

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees, and set your pan inside.

Meanwhile, melt the butter on low heat, continuing to cook until it smells nutty. Remove from the fire as soon as this happens, and add the browned butter to the batter. (It may coagulate; that’s fine.)  

Remove the hot pan from the oven. Working quickly, drop a bit of butter and/or meat drippings into each cup and swoosh it around. Add your batter. This recipe will fill a true 6-cup popover pan, or a 12-cup regular muffin pan. 

Cook for 30 minutes, or until browned and set. (Less if you used a regular muffin pan.) Try not to open the oven to check doneness more than once; the cool air rushing in will deflate the popovers.

When Erik Black decided to stop making his fabulous Ugly Drum pastrami I was deeply disappointed. It’s one of my all-time favorite foods. So I am very happy that this fine meat is now back on the market.

When Erik was cooking at fancy Los Angeles restaurants he spent every weekend eating pastrami sandwiches at Langer’s. He liked the tradition of the 73-year-old restaurant, and he liked the sandwich. But being a chef, he began to wonder if he could do better. He set off on a quest.

He went east to New York’s Katz’s, where he was enchanted by the way pastrami was served. “I’ve spent hours,” he told me, “watching YouTube videos of the Katz’s meat cutters making sandwiches. There is a music to it.”

He went north to Montreal to learn all he could about the city’s classic smoked meat, a steamed version of pastrami.

And then he went south. “A friend told me I needed to visit central Texas and experience old brick smokehouses where you have to step over the fire on your way in. The best brisket I had was at Mueller’s in Taylor, but the most impact came from Smitty’s in Lockhart.”

Inspired now, he went home to Los Angeles, built a smoker out of an old oil drum—hence the name of his company, Ugly Drum—and set out to achieve pastrami perfection.

“What I make,” he admits, “isn’t really pastrami. Pastrami is made from the navel, a flatter much smaller cut than the brisket. But I wanted serious smoke, and the navel dries out and turns to shoe leather in a smoker. So, I pick out well-marbled prime briskets instead.”

The result is such a potent combination of texture and flavor that it’s almost impossible not to moan when you take your first bite. You are engulfed in an overwhelming rush of salt, spice, and sweetness as the tender meat evaporates in your mouth. It leaves behind a haunting, slightly fruity scent of cloves, mustard, celery, chilis, and pepper.

Black coddles his briskets, giving them a long slow bath in the spicy brine, flipping the meat each day. When they’ve finally absorbed the cure, he rubs each one with more spices and set them in a slow smoker over smoldering logs of pecan and oak.

Neither classic Jewish pastrami nor righteous Texas barbecue, this marriage of two traditions produces something remarkable.

In the years that I worked at the Los Angeles Times the paper was known as “the velvet coffin” because it was the most luxurious place to work in journalism. (When I arrived as restaurant critic I asked my boss about my budget. “We’ll let you know when you go over it,” he replied. They never did.)

Do you need any more proof than the these menus from CEO Robert Erburu’s annual holiday feast?