Recently I went to Evoe on Hawthorne for a lunchtime snack. I like to stop in and chit chat with Kevin Gibson while I eat, and I have always enjoyed his food whether it was at Genoa, Castagna, or his current place of cookerie, Evoe.
He suggested I have the lamb crepinette. A crepinette is a small flattened sausage, usually made with ground or minced pork, lamb, veal, or chicken. It is typically wrapped in caul fat and sauteed in a skillet. Caul fat is the fatty web like membrane which surrounds the internal organs of a cow, sheep, or pig. It’s usually pork caul fat that I find available.
As a cooking ingredient, the primary purpose of caul fat is to lend it’s fat to keeping the wrapped meat moist, plus adding another flavor element.
He served the 2 crepinette with an aioli, watercress, and suggested a good Belgian Beer. The crepinette were succulent containing slices of local black truffles and mint, but there was a flavor I couldn’t place. There was a certain sharp acidity which combined with the mint reminded me of tarragon. I asked Kevin if there was tarragon in them, and he said no, they had the spice Sumac in them. Sumac? I couldn’t recall ever having heard of this spice.
Sumac:
The spice comes from the berries of a wild bush that grows wild in all Mediterranean areas, especially in Sicily and southern Italy, and parts of the Middle East, notably Iran. It is an essential ingredient in Arabic cooking, being preferred to lemon for sourness and astringency.
The whole fruit appears in dense clusters. Individual berries are small, round, 10 mm (1/4”) in diameter, russet coloured and covered with hairs. The bouquet is slightly aromatic, and the flavor is sour, fruity and astringent.The berries can be dried and ground into a purple-red powder, then sprinkled into the cooking, or macerated in hot water and mashed to release their juice, the resulting liquid being used as one might use lemon juice.
He suggested I have the lamb crepinette. A crepinette is a small flattened sausage, usually made with ground or minced pork, lamb, veal, or chicken. It is typically wrapped in caul fat and sauteed in a skillet. Caul fat is the fatty web like membrane which surrounds the internal organs of a cow, sheep, or pig. It’s usually pork caul fat that I find available.
As a cooking ingredient, the primary purpose of caul fat is to lend it’s fat to keeping the wrapped meat moist, plus adding another flavor element.
He served the 2 crepinette with an aioli, watercress, and suggested a good Belgian Beer. The crepinette were succulent containing slices of local black truffles and mint, but there was a flavor I couldn’t place. There was a certain sharp acidity which combined with the mint reminded me of tarragon. I asked Kevin if there was tarragon in them, and he said no, they had the spice Sumac in them. Sumac? I couldn’t recall ever having heard of this spice.
Sumac:
The spice comes from the berries of a wild bush that grows wild in all Mediterranean areas, especially in Sicily and southern Italy, and parts of the Middle East, notably Iran. It is an essential ingredient in Arabic cooking, being preferred to lemon for sourness and astringency.
The whole fruit appears in dense clusters. Individual berries are small, round, 10 mm (1/4”) in diameter, russet coloured and covered with hairs. The bouquet is slightly aromatic, and the flavor is sour, fruity and astringent.The berries can be dried and ground into a purple-red powder, then sprinkled into the cooking, or macerated in hot water and mashed to release their juice, the resulting liquid being used as one might use lemon juice.
Sumac is used widely in cookery in Arabia, Turkey and the Levant, and especially in Lebanese cuisine. In these areas it is a major souring agent, used where other regions would employ lemon, tamarind or vinegar. It is rubbed onto kebabs before grilling and may be used in this way with fish or chicken. The juice extracted from sumac is popular in salad dressings and marinades and the powdered form is used in stews and vegetable and chicken casseroles. “The seed of Sumach eaten in sauces with meat, stoppeth all manner of fluxes of the belly...” (Gerard, 1597) A mixture of yogurt and sumac is often served with kebabs. Zather is a blend of sumac and thyme use to flavour labni, a cream cheese made from yogurt.
After this bit of research I realized I had likely tasted it before in Lebanese food and not known what it was, mostly because I rarely cook Middle Eastern food. I assumed that the acidity I tasted there was from lemon.
If you’re interested in purchasing some Sumac to play around with, you can find it here in town at Penzey’s Spices or Barbur World Foods.
The Geek Chef
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