I’ve been working on and tweaking my pastrami recipes for years. I had a very good idea on how to do a turkey breast as pastrami. It’s different than working with beef because you don’t want to do the pastrami solution for more than 4 hours. I figured out the perfect formula and spice rub for the most delicious pastrami turkey I’ve tasted so far. I do note that I started with a dry brined turkey breast. A brine is means the meat was soaked in a salt solution. Marinades are for flavor and are usually acidic this marinade is salty but it contains the flavors for pastrami.. I skipped the brining step so you need to brine your turkey breast first or skip that step by purchasing an already brined or dry brined turkey breast. You can use this recipe for both sides of the breast or do one half and use half the brine for another time or for something else. I did half pastrami and the other half traditional with herbs. I used an average sized turkey and each half after cooking weighed around 1 1/2 pounds…I consider that around 6 or more servings for each half breast. You can make the marinade and rub the day before if you want.

Ingredients for around 12 (or more) servings

1/2 cup olive oil (that you froze in a flat square shape that’s cut in half for each Sous Vide bag)

4 Tablespoons ground coriander (rub)

! Tablespoon ground black pepper (rub)

1 Tablespoon smoked paprika (rub)

1 whole boneless skinless turkey breast – from an average sized turkey that has been brined or dry brined – pierced all over with a fork

1 cup dark brown sugar

5 oz diamond brand kosher salt – DO NOT USE ANY OTHER BRAND BECAUSE OTHER BRANDS HAVE A DIFFERENT SALT CONTENT and also PENETRATE THE MEAT DIFFERENT ****ONLY USE DIAMOND KOSHER SALT FOR THIS RECIPE

1/4 cup honey

2 teaspoons juniper berries

3 Tablespoons coriander seeds

2 teaspoons allspice berries

3 bay leaves

1 cinnamon stick

1 teaspoon whole cloves

2 teaspoons yellow mustard seeds

2 Tablespoons telicherry black peppercorns

2 teaspoons white peppercorns

1 teaspoon ground ginger powder

10 garlic cloves sliced thin

1 Tablespoon granulated garlic

2 hot dried peppers – crumbled (I used Calabrian Piri Piri peppers) (two pinches of crush red pepper will do in a pinch)

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

2 cups water

Directions

Make the marinade.

In a sauce pot add brown sugar, diamond salt, honey, juniper berries, coriander seeds, allspice berries, bay leaves, cinnamon stick, cloves, mustard seeds, black peppercorns, white peppercorns, ginger, garlics, hot pepper, smoked paprika and water. Bring to boil then let simmer about 10 minutes. Take off heat let cool to room temperature. For best results refrigerate and marinate the turkey breast tomorrow.

Make the rub.

In a small mixing bowl add the ground coriander, ground black pepper and the smoked paprika. Mix well and put in a sealed container or a ziplock bag.

Next Day

Each Turkey Breast gets pierced all over and goes in a gallon ziplock bag with 1/2 of the marinating liquid. Squeeze out the air from the bag. This needs to be refrigerated for four hours.

Add water to the sous vide and set to 140 degrees F.

After four hours take the turkey out of the bag and rinse it off and pat it dry and then apply a light amount of rub to it. Then it goes in a vacuumed sealed bag with half the frozen cube of olive oil. The sealed bag(s) go in the Sous Vide for 3-4 hours after ruching prober temperature…(incase you don’t know…once set at 140 the temperature will drop and it takes awhile to reach the 140)

After the 3-4 the four hours in the Sous Vide remove the turkey breast bags. Run them under cold water or apply an ice bath to stop the cooking process.

Just before serving Blot them off. Apply a little more rub. Sear them off in a pan or finish on your grill.

ENJOY!

You might want to serve with-

Enjoy!

You have to travel far to find delicious rye bread in certain parts of metro Phoenix. I make my own and just came up with this even easier version of rye rolls. This recipe is easy but it requires a stand mixer and takes a little over five hours. It makes eight nice sized rolls.

Ingredients for 8 servings

2 cups + 2 Tablespoons bread flour (plus more for dough to rest and to knead)

1 cup + 2 Tablespoons dark rye flour

2 Tablespoons dark brown sugar

1 1/8 Tablespoon kosher salt

1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

2 Tablespoons caraway seeds (plus a few pinches for sprinkling the tops of rolls)

1 1/2 cup water

1/4 cup oil

2 Tablespoons semolina flour – to rest unbaked rolls on (can substitute corn meal)

1 egg white – beaten

small pinch French salt flakes for finishing

Set oven to 425 degrees F

In your stand mixer bowl add the flours, sugar, salt, yeast, caraway seeds, water and oil. Before you start up your mixer you need to mix this up with a fork so when the mixer mixes it your flour doesn’t fly all over the place. Once you have the batter reasonably mixed then attach your dough hook. Set it on Medium High and let it go for ten minutes. The dough should pull away from the bowl and wrap it’s self around the hook.

Get a large bowl and add some bread flour for your dough to rest on. Take the dough off the hook and knead it and roll it into a ball. Let it rest in the bowl for FOUR HOURS covered with plastic wrap.

You need either one large baking sheet or two smaller baking sheets to be covered with parchment and the parchment needs a light coating of semolina flour.

After 4 hours punch it down and divide it in quarters and divide each quarter in a half so you have eight even pieces.

Kenad each piece in a ball. Slap it around a bit. Roll it in a log and then knead it into a ball and place on semolina lined parchment. Repeat till all 8 rolls are done spewing them apart some.

Brush with egg whites twice. Be careful and don’t get too close to the parchment or you will glue the roll to the paper. Sprinkle each roll with some caraway seeds and a very light pinch of flaked salt.

These go in a preheated 425 degree F oven. When they turn brown (13-15 minutes) turn down to 350 degrees F. They only need maybe 5 more minutes in the oven. In my oven the rolls took a total of 20 minutes. The timing may differ some.

ENJOY

My husband kept raving about these rolls. I thought they were pretty darn good.

I made this easy quick kraut style slaw to go on my turkey pastrami. It’s flavored like kraut but no fermentation. It’s not as harsh as some krauts are. It takes about three days to get full flavored. This recipe might make more kraut slaw than you need but it will stay good for at least two weeks. My idea of serving size will differ from yours but this makes over eight serving.

ingredients for around 8 servings

1 small cabbage – sliced very thin on a mandolin

1 red onion – sliced very thin on a mandolin (white or sweet onion is fine too)

1 cup apple cider vinegar

1 Tablespoon dark brown sugar

1 Tablespoon white sugar

1 teaspoon sea salt

8 juniper berries – ground

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

1/2 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds

Directions

Combine everything in a large bowl and mix well. Let this sit on the counter for one hour. Mix well again. Refrigerate. Mix once a day till day three.

Enjoy!

Here it is on a Forking Truth Rye Roll with Forking Truth Turkey Pastrami.

This was FORKING GOOD!

Enjoy!

I was watching a competition Food Network TV Show where the contestants had to make rugelach. It is a cream cheese and butter pastry that is wrapped around a filling such as jam, chocolate chips, nuts and or cinnamon and sugar. I looked up recipes for rugelach. Basically most are 1/2 flour and the other 1/2 is 1/4 cream cheese and 1/4 butter. I know these pastries are always delicious and now I know why……They are very rich and fattening. I decided that since these pastries are very rich I only wanted to make a very small batch and figured out on how to only make EIGHT small pastries. The FUN part is that you can make any flavor you want. Figure out what filling you want. Then you have to roll out the pastry in some sort of sugar…see if you can figure out something that matches your filling in the sugar. I went with pistachio. I had in imported pistachio spread. And I mixed crushed pistachios with the sugar that I rolled the dough in. These came out FORKING AMAZING….Next time I will do a high end Nutella filling and do my sugar mixed with hazelnuts. I think a date filling with chocolate chips would be delicious. I think orange marmalade with a orange zest sugar topping would also be delicious. We could do a cherry filling with crushed almonds and sugar…..Could go on and on and on….The fun is for you to pick your flavor! (This recipe does not include a filling recipe…you have to come up with that yourself)

Ingredients for 8 servings

1/2 cup flour

small pinch salt

2 oz cream cheese

2 oz unsalted butter – chopped into small cubes or grated (I grated on a big hole grater and lost some of the butter)

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 egg yolk

sugar to roll dough….I used course raw sugar maybe two tablespoons, use any sugar you want like flour to roll sticky dough

optional -other add ons to sugar

A small amount of filling for your pastries (chocolate chips, jam, nuts and honey, peanut butter, etc)

Directions

Mix up the flour, salt, cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and yolk with a fork. You don’t need to mix it up all the way more like 80%. This dough is rich and soft so you need to wrap it in plastic wrap in a disk shape and chill it in the refrigerator over night or give it a few hours.

When you are ready to roll.

Set your oven to 375 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Use your sugar like flour to roll out the dough and make it into a round shape. (I used raw sugar and crushed pistachios)

Spread your filling on the dough.

Cut like a pizza in quarters and cut threw each quarter so you have 8 wedges.

Roll UP from the large or crust end and place on the parchment lined baking sheet.

Place on middle rack. Mine took 14 minutes in the preheated 375 degree F oven. Timing may differ slightly.

These are FORKING DELICIOUS!

Enjoy!

I happen to have a jar of neonata. It’s a Calabrian Hot Fish condiment that often is just used on pasta. My jar was expiring so I looked up recipes on the web for neonata and Chef Matthew Taylor’s Recipe for summer squash with neonata (spelled incorrectly “neoata”), smoked yogurt and peppered feta came up so I thought I’d give it a try. I made a few changes to the original recipe. I thought of olive oil smoked paprika potatoes instead of smoked yogurt. I didn’t roast baby squash so I broiled regular squash instead. The last change was that I didn’t use Fresno peppers. I used baby bell peppers because I had baby bell peppers at home. I do note that you need to pickle the peppers the day before so they have a chance to pickle. A special THANKS to Chef Matt Taylor from Mora Italian Restaurant. This recipe is FORKING AWESOME! My idea of a serving size might differ from yours…..This makes around 4 servings.

Ingredients for around 4 servings

8 baby bell peppers sliced in thin rings (original recipe calls for 6 Fresno peppers)

1 cup champagne vinegar

1 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

1 lb potatoes – peel – cut in half

1 Tablespoon sea salt (to season the potatoes boiling)

4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (maybe up to 2 Tablespoons more or add a little water till potatoes are the right consistency) ((I used 2 Tablespoons water because the neonata has a lot of oil in it and I wanted to keep the potatoes free of dairy)

1 Tablespoon pepper brine from peppers you pickled

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

crushed sea salt to taste

fresh cracked black pepper to taste

2 lbs squash (original recipe calls to roast baby squash in a 400 F degree oven for 5 minutes) ((I used Mexican squash and cut the squash in planks and broiled with olive oil.

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil – that got sprayed lightly on both sides of squash

3 Tablespoons neonata

4 Tablespoons peppered feta cheese

1 teaspoon fresh thyme

Directions

Make the pickled peppers. Bring the vinegar, sugar and water to a boil. Pour over pepper rings. Let cool on the counter to room temperature and then refrigerate.

The next day you can do the rest.

If you are broiling turn your oven on to broil.

You can either roast, grill or broil (if you cut into planks) the squash. I used Mexican green squash that were smaller in size in trimmed ends and cut into thirds longways and then half so the planks weren’t too long.

Put the potatoes and one Tablespoon sea salt in a pot. Cover the potatoes well with water. Bring to a medium boil and cook till fork tender. (around 15-20 minutes). Mash the potatoes by hand with a masher. Add the olive oil, pepper brine, smoked paprika, salt and either add more olive oil or just water till the potatoes are the correct consistency. Add sea salt and fresh black pepper to taste.

Lightly spray a baking sheet with olive oil. Place squash on baking sheet. Lightly spray top of squash with olive oil. Place under broiler till browned. Turn squash over and brown other side. Apply salt, pepper, fresh thyme to taste.

SERVE IMMEDIATELEY!

Spread out the potatoes on plate.

Toss the squash with neonata and place over potatoes.

Top squash with peppered feta and pickled peppers.

ENJOY

A Special THANKS to Chef Matthew Taylor and Mora Italian Restaurant for sharing his Forking Awesome recipe Summer Squash with Neonata, Smoked Yogurt and Peppered Feta with us so we all can enjoy!