A Polish traditional dish, oh yes, another post from that series. Don’t you just love the colours?
All the ingredients are really arbitrary, so if you add a little more of less, it’ll only affect the final quantity of the dish. For basic ratio guidlines, stick to my photos, and feel free to make any fraction of my dish.
Ingredients: a few thin good-quality beef steaks, a small pack of california dried plums, around 100g of smoked bacon, salt/pepper to taste, and…
Cucumbers pickled in brine too, of course! they can be store bought, but if you’re feeling rather fancy and happen to have a few kg of earth-cucumbers and a collection of glass jars - the link to my family recipe is for you.
Onions, to enhance the flavour of the meat- peeled and chopped.
Directions: Start off by placing a fair share of pickles, plum, onion and bacon on each beef cutlet. Make sure you’ll be able to fold each one easily without the contents spilling out. Pepper each piece to taste.
A key tip - DON’T USE SALT AT THIS STAGE! Salt will make the meat rigid while cooking, rather than allowing it to grow tender. Worry not, salt will be added at the end of the process to the sauce.
Take special care to close each meat roll with a piece of thin string or a toothpick- these are both easy to remove before or while serving later.
Fry the rolls in butter until the outside is nicely browned - this will allow you to seal in all the juices before cooking, ensure that you won’t end up with soup (where all the good stuff is let out into the broth, leaving the meat insipid at times.
Transfer the meat rolls to a thick cooking pot in which they will be slowly stewed.
Next, fry a batch of chopped onion in butter, and cover the meat with it.
Pour a few cups of water, just enough to cover the onion and meat, and slowly simmer until a brothy-oniony soup forms, and the meat is thoroughly cooked and juicy.
Best served with bubkwheat porridge or potatoe dumplings to accomodate the already colourful flavours of the meat - the deep velvety meat, sweet plum, tangy pickle and salty bacon give you an original twist on a beef cutlet.