- Camera
- ISO
- Aperture
- Exposure
- Focal Length
- Nikon D3
- 800
- f/2.8
- 1/25th
- 32mm
Pastrami & chorizo
I love pastrami. I’d never really had it until I was about 20, and I curse the fact that the first two decades of my life languished in its beefy absence. It’s one of the all-time great sandwich fillings, with its place in butty-lore cemented by wafer-thin mountains produced by The Carnegie and Katz’s in New York, and of course, Langer’s Deli in Los Angeles (LangersDeli.com). While I’ll call into question a lot of things the US does, I’ll stand and applaud when it comes to what they do with beef brisket.
Thing is, in much of the UK, pastrami isn’t spoken about in the same hushed tones, and although you can get it in your local supermarket, it’s a case of the same old, same old, with way too little costing far too much. Even in a deli, you can pay £4.50 for 100g of the stuff, which by weight, is about five times as expensive as a topside roasting joint. Nuts to that. So, to give today’s butty a bit of life and soul, the majority of a packet of the nicest-looking pastrami I could find on my way home has been added to with some slivers of chorizo and a healthy dose of mustard to boost the beef’s peppery flavour. A good wad of Italian-style salad graces the top, with a sliced tomato tucked in for extra juiciness.
A handsome, tasty sandwich, maybe, but I’ve deliberately not gone for a classic brisket-basked butty – after some serious chin-stroking, I’ve decided that there’s only one real option to do pastrami properly, and it isn’t paying $44 to get Langer’s to FedEx me a fully-fledged brisket from California. Nope, following my decision to do from-scratch roast beef, I’m going to go all-out and do the same with another lump of cow carcass. Keep your eyes peeled for The Butty’s very own salt beef and pastrami – coming soon, sandwich fans…
