Grated Pastıste mezze
Yes, we just made that name up 😄 There is no such dish — but with what you have, this is exactly what there will be.
This wants to be a cold mezze: no heat at all, and it finishes by sitting in the fridge.
Not cooked at all. The work is in the cutting and in keeping it cold. Grating multiplies the surface many times over: it cooks far faster and gives up its water at once.
This is weight, not nutrition. Olive oil can be a tenth of the weight and most of the calories.
You gave no amounts; these are a sensible household measure for each. Change the ratio and you change the dish.
Try adding this
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No fat. In a raw plate the oil is the carrier as much as the flavour: most aroma dissolves in fat, and without it you never taste half of it.
Olive oil
Tahini
Butter
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Nothing crunchy. Scatter walnuts, almonds or fried breadcrumbs over it: a single-texture dish tires by the third spoonful.
Walnut
Almond
Pistachio kernels (raw)
Salt, pepper, water and oil are assumed to be in every kitchen; we never count them as missing.
Generated once and kept against this exact combination of ingredients, cooking and cut, so everybody who picks the same things sees the same one. It is not a photograph of this dish: nobody has cooked it.
If we post this plate on @mutfaksim, shall we put your name under it? Leave your handle, that is all.
A friend you name will be mentioned in a public post. Only write somebody who would be happy with that: you cannot agree to it on their behalf.
On a plate, a smooth mush and the colour of what went in, unbrowned.
- Water
- 69% The first thing that decides the consistency.
- Fat
- 9% Gives the shine and the coating it leaves.
- Heat
- none Nothing is cooked: both the colour and the texture come straight from the ingredients.
The figures above are the engine’s reading: the colour comes from the measured colour of what went in and how far browning ran, the consistency from the water fraction, the shine from the fat. The image is generated from those same numbers.
There is no heat in this one: the colour and the texture come straight from the ingredients.
For 1, 210 g in total
The amounts, the steps and the engine’s readings are blurred: making the photograph opens them.
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25pcs
Pastırma cured beef
≈ 150 g
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1pcs
Lemon
≈ 30 g
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30g
Tomato paste
Added at the end: Salt, Black pepper, Water, Olive oil. No weight is given for these: the amount is a matter of taste, and the engine’s prediction carries none for them either.
How to make it
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Slice the pastırma cured beef paper-thin against the grain and lay it out in a single layer. Do not heat it: a pan takes the last of the water out of something that spent months being dried on purpose.
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Pastırma cured beef
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Water
Why Curing takes the water activity below 0.85: the salt and the drying already preserve it, and no cooking is needed. A thin slice lets the fat and the çemen crust arrive together — a thick one tastes only of salt. -
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Add the lemon, tomato paste at the moment of serving, not before.
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Lemon
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Tomato paste
Why Salt pulls water out by osmosis: a salad salted early is sitting in its own liquid within ten minutes and has lost its texture. Acid does the same to a leaf, faster. -
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Serve it ten minutes out of the fridge. At 4 °C most of the aroma never reaches the air, so it does not taste cold, it tastes of nothing.
Why Volatile aroma reaches the nose by evaporating, and evaporation depends on temperature. The same dish smells less when it is cold, and what smells less tastes less.
What it is like
Nobody has eaten this and there is no photograph of it. All we have is the taste vectors of what went in, through the same model every written recipe uses.
This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.