“Before I even started cooking, my dad told me I would have to make pastrami. I have mixed European origins: German Jewish paternal family, arrived in France during the Second World War, Armenian family on my mother’s side … My brother and I were born in Paris and have bathed in (and ate) this pluriculture all our childhood.
When we were little, it was more my father who cooked, often dishes in sauce, chicken with spices, sautéed or stewed meats. Nothing very connoted, with the exception of the “Jewish pâté” with poultry livers and a few traditional festivals from my grandfather’s time. That being said, my father was able to travel all over Paris to buy the best picklefleisch (cured beef) and pastrami (smoked and cured beef), products he loved. It has always remained anchored in me.
“It took me a long time to get a satisfactory result because it is a long and complex process. “
About ten years ago, I went to Canada with Jean-André Charial, my boss at L’Oustau de Baumanière (Les Baux-de-Provence), and the first thing I did when I arrived in Montreal , it’s going to Schwartz’s Deli, the legendary Hebrew deli, to order a pastrami sandwich.
When I opened my own restaurant in 2015, and as my dad predicted, I started making my own pastrami. I tried to reproduce the taste that remained in my memory, and I took a long time to obtain a satisfactory result, because it is a long and complex process.
We start with a fresh beef brisket, which must be put in brine (salted water) for several days, rinse and leave to drain for three days, then marinate for a long time in a mixture of spices (coriander seeds, mustard, cumin, paprika, fennel, etc.), then smoke on the vines before cooking it at low temperature (sous vide or stewed) for forty-eight hours and leaving it to rest in its juice for a few more days. It takes a tremendous amount of time, but thanks to the sous-vide cooking and choosing slightly fatter pieces, I ended up getting the melt-in-the-mouth texture I was looking for.
Two years after the restaurant opened, we opened a small grocery store across the street where we offer sandwiches. During the confinements, we maintained the “take-away” activity at the grocery store, but it seemed obvious to us that we had to offer improved, more cooked sandwiches. The sandwich is easy to eat, with no utensils or containers, but when the customer has no other choice, you have to be able to offer alternatives to ham and butter – although I love ham and butter.
We developed a sandwich made from homemade sandwich bread, in large slices, like katsu sando (Japanese sandwich), and decided to combine our pastrami with avocado and red cabbage in a salad. The result is a tasty, very silky, lightly toasted and spicy sandwich that can be eaten with the fingers but is a real dish, whatever the circumstances. “
Elmer grocery store and restaurant, 19 and 30, rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, Paris 3rd.