Mountain Views News          Saturday, June 1, 2013

10

FOOD & DRINK

 Mountain Views News Saturday, June 1, 2013 

MY PASTRAMI DREAMS

When my friend and superstar Personal Trainer 
Darrian Dalangini challenged me to find the best 
Pastrami in the area, I thought “easy enough, I’ll check 
out a few places, post a few notes on my facebook site 
www.facebook/peterdills.com, and the answer will 
appear”. I found out quickly don’t argue sex, politics 
or who has the best pastrami sandwich in town. Before 
we start this argument, let’s take a look at the origins 
of pastrami.

Like corned beef, pastrami was originally created as 
a way to preserve meat before modern refrigeration. 
For pastrami, the raw meat is brined, partly dried, 
seasoned with various herbs and spices, then smoked 
and steamed. In the United States, although beef plates are the traditional cut of meat for making 
pastrami, it is now common to see pastrami made from beef brisket, beef round, and turkey. 

The Romanian specialty was introduced to the 
United States in a wave of Romanian Jewish 
immigration from Bessarabia and Romania in the 
second half of the 19th century, via the Yiddish. 
Early references in English used the spelling “pastrama”, closer to the Romanian original. The 
modified “pastrami” spelling likely was introduced to sound related to the Italian salami.

Although New York’s Sussman Volk is generally credited with producing the first pastrami sandwich 
in 1887, that claim is disputed by the founders of Katz’s Deli in New York, which was founded in 
1888. Volk, a kosher butcher, claimed he got the recipe from a Romanian friend in exchange for 
storing the friend’s luggage while the friend returned to Romania. According to his descendant, 
Patricia Volk, Volk prepared pastrami according to the recipe and served it on sandwiches out of his 
butcher shop. The sandwich was so popular that Volk converted the butcher shop into a restaurant 
to sell pastrami sandwiches.

Romanian Jews immigrated to New York as early as 1872. Among Jewish Romanians, goose breasts 
were commonly made into pastrami because they were inexpensive. Beef navels were cheaper than 
goose meat in America, so the Romanian Jews in America adapted their recipe and began to make 
the cheaper beef pastrami.

Making foods to sell out of push carts in the Lower East Side of New York was one of the most 
popular occupations for immigrant Jews in the latter half of the 19th century. Because sandwiches 
were a hugely popular foodstuff in New York, it is possible Romanian Jewish immigrants were 
making and selling pastrami sandwiches from push carts on the streets of New York at least a decade 
before Sussman Volk converted his butcher shop into a restaurant.

With a little help from my friends, here are the top three choices for a pastrami sandwich in the 
Pasadena/Los Angeles areas. In no particular order:

The Hat With a number of locations throughout the San Gabriel Valley, I visited the one on the 
corner of N. Lake and Villa in Pasadena. I ordered mine dry, and 
loaded up on the horseradish and spicy mustard

Johnnie Pastrami 4017 Sepulveda Blvd. Culver City. The names 
says it all. Although Johnnie recently passed on to the sandwich 
shop in the sky, visitors flock to this spot for pastrami on a buttery 
French roll, and ask for extra pickles.

Tied: Langers and Canters. These two veterans probably received 
the most passionate support with such postings as “no need to go 
anywhere else”.

Canter’s Deli 419 N/ Fairfax Los Angeles (323) 651-2030

Langers 704 S. Alvarado St. Los Angeles (213) 483-8050

Do you like your Pastrami thick or thin? I’ll have to chicken out 
on this one and say they were all good !!

Email your favorite at thechefknows@yahoo.com

Join me on www.peterdills.com 5 PM for radio show that is 
streaming, then at 5:30 PM KABC 790 AM


BAKE YOUR OWN 
FRESH BREAD

This is the easiest one-loaf yeast bread you will 
ever bake. The Super Easy Bread for Beginners 
recipe produces a soft crust and a moist center

INGREDIENTS:

•3/4 cup warm water

•1 package active dry yeast

•1 tsp salt

•1-1/2 tbsp sugar

•1 tbsp vegetable shortening

•1/2 cup milk

•3 cups all-purpose flour, approximately

DIRECTIONS:

1.In large bowl, add the warm water. Slowly stir in dry yeast. Continue to stir until yeast is dissolved.

2.Add salt, sugar, shortening, and milk to bowl. Stir.

3.Mix in the first 2 cups of flour.

4.If needed, begin adding more flour, one tablespoon at a time, until the dough chases the spoon 
around the bowl.

5.You do not need to use up all the flour called for in this recipe, or you may need more flour than 
called for. The amounts vary depending on many factors, including weather, which is why most bread 
recipes only give an approximate amount of flour needed.

6.Turn dough out onto floured board and knead, adding small spoonfuls of flour as needed, until the 
dough is soft and smooth, not sticky to the touch.

7.Put dough in buttered bowl, turn dough over so that the top of dough is greased. Cover and let rise 
in warm spot for 1 hour.

8.Punch down dough. Turn out onto floured board and knead.

9.Preheat oven at 375 degrees F. 

10.Form dough into loaf and set in buttered bread pan. Cover and let rise for about 30 minutes.

11.Score dough by cutting three slashes across the top with a sharp knife. Put in oven and bake for 
about 45 minutes or until golden brown.

12.Turn out bread and let cool on a rack or clean dishtowel.

TABLE FOR TWO by Peter Dills

thechefknows@yahoo.com


ITALIAN PASTA & WINE TASTING

Tuesday, June 11 - 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Trattoria Neapolis - 336 South Lake Avenue, Pasadena

$35 per person*

Trattoria Neapolis & Contessa Italian Home Collection

Team up to rediscover some Italian Roots and Traditions.

Luisa and a Sommelier from Trattoria Neapolis will guide you through a tasting of Organic 

traditional Pastas & Wines from Italy.

This very special Pasta is made from ancient varieties of wheat.

Reservations are suggested, but walk-ins are welcome.

Call Trattoria Neapolis to reserve. 626.792.3000

*Plus tax & 18% gratuity

THE WORLD AROUND US


HUBBLE SHOWS RING NEBULA’S TRUE SHAPE

 The Ring Nebula’s distinctive shape makes it a popular 
illustration for astronomy books. But new observations by 
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of this glowing gas shroud 
around an old, dying, Sun-like star reveal a new twist.

 “The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it’s like a 
jelly doughnut, because it’s filled with material in the 
middle,” said C. Robert O’Dell of Vanderbilt University 
in Nashville, Tenn. He leads a research team that used 
Hubble and several ground-based telescopes to obtain 
the best view yet of the iconic nebula. The images show 
a more complex structure than astronomers once thought 
and have allowed them to construct the most precise 3-D 
model of the nebula.

 “With Hubble’s detail, we see a completely different 
shape than what’s been thought about historically for this 
classic nebula,” O’Dell said. “The new Hubble observations 
show the nebula in much clearer detail, and we see things 
are not as simple as we previously thought.”

 The Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years from Earth 
and measures roughly 1 light-year across. Located in the 
constellation Lyra near the bright star Vega, the nebula is 
a popular target for amateur astronomers. It can be easily 
seen, even in most urban skies, with telescopes of 6-inch 
or larger aperture.

 Previous observations had detected the gaseous material 
in the ring’s central region. But the new view by Hubble’s 
sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 shows the nebula’s 
structure in more detail. O’Dell’s team suggests the ring 
wraps around a blue, football-shaped structure. Each end 
of the structure protrudes out of opposite sides of the ring.

 The nebula is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see 
the ring face-on. In the Hubble image, the blue structure 
is the glow of helium. Radiation from the white dwarf 
star, the white dot in the center of the ring, is exciting the 
helium to glow. The white dwarf is the stellar remnant of a 
Sun-like star that has exhausted its hydrogen fuel and has 
shed its outer layers of gas to gravitationally collapse to a 
compact object.

 All the glowing gas we see was expelled by the central 
star about 4,000 years ago. The original star was several 
times more massive than our Sun. After billions of years 
converting hydrogen to helium in its core, the star began 
to run out of fuel. It then ballooned in size, becoming a 
red giant. During this phase, the star shed its outer gaseous 
layers into space and began to collapse as fusion reactions 
began to die out. A gusher of ultraviolet light from the 
dying star energized the gas, making it glow.

 The outer rings were formed when faster-moving gas 
slammed into slower-moving material. The nebula is 
expanding at more than 43,000 miles an hour, but the 
center is moving faster than the expansion of the main 
ring. O’Dell’s team measured the nebula’s expansion by 
comparing the new Hubble observations with Hubble 
studies made in 1998.

 The Ring Nebula (photo courtesy Hubble Website)

 will continue to expand for another 10,000 years, a short phase in the lifetime of the star. The nebula will become fainter and fainter until it merges with the interstellar medium.

 Studying the Ring Nebula’s fate will provide insight into our own Sun’s demise, expected to occur about 6 billion years from now. 

 In the analysis, the research team also obtained images from the Large Binocular Telescope at the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona and spectroscopic data from the San Pedro Martir 
Observatory in Baja California, Mexico.

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@MtnViewsNews.com.