Mititei (Romanian Sausage Links)

 What hot dogs are to American food, mititei (literal translation "little ones") are to Romanians, in more ways than one. They're a staple of the grill as spring warms into summer, they're key to social gatherings for leisure, sports or vacation, and the top tier product is all beef*. 

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Before anyone comes after me for the heresy of claiming all beef mititei, I will note that popular recipes include a combination of beef, pork and/or mutton, and I'm here to tell you that even lighter protein can feature too - I've tried with half ground chicken or turkey, though you have to be extra careful to hydrate them well enough and not overcook to lose moisture. However, key ingredients to a good batch are garlic - plentiful and fresh - bone broth and baking soda. I am not entirely sure whether the baking soda is more important for binding the mix together or for texture/slight airiness, but I do know that you can't call something mici/mititei without it.

I adapted my home recipe from the gold standard for mititei in Romania, those served at the historical and legendary Carul cu Bere. The step by step pictures I included in this post were done with a mix of 1lb ground beef and 1lb ground chicken - as I mentioned before, recommendation for optimal results is all beef, 85% lean, which is what I will include in my recipe writeup below.

For optimal flavor, start the mix the day before you plan to eat it, and some prep-ahead can be helpful in streamlining the process. To that end, day 1 (T-2 days before mititei party) plan on making your bone broth. If you use store bought go for the real deal (should be gelatinous when cold) and skip ahead to day 2. I used beef bones in a 4qt pot and simmered them on low heat for 3-4 hours. The longer the better, but make sure the heat is quite low so you don't lose too much to steam. Once done, let the broth cool to room temperature then set in the fridge to chill completely. Skim the fat layer off the top to get a beautifully thick bone broth ready for use.

Onto day 2 (T-1 days before mititei extravaganza) - measure and ready your spices. As with most Romanian food, these are not spicy but rather well seasoned and aromatic. The all star lineup: black pepper, thyme, allspice, coriander, cumin and anise powder. For this step you'll also need a head of garlic, baking soda and lemon juice.

Add the 2lbs of meat in a large bowl, sprinkle the baking soda and pour lemon juice on top, then mix thoroughly. Next, incorporate all the powdered spices and 1/4 cup of cool bone broth, then knead into the meat. I find that a wooden spoon works well for this step, but don't be afraid to get your hands dirty on this one, as long as you take proper precautions in handling raw meat (wash hands with soap and warm water before touching anything else for next steps). 

You can push the garlic through a garlic press or mince with a knife. My quick shortcut for this step was blending the garlic into 1/4 cup of bone broth with an immersion blender, then adding it to the meat all together. If you mince the garlic separately, then add it to the bowl along with 1/4 cup of bone broth (1/2 cup so far) and mix well. You're looking for a soft but not too loose consistency at this stage, so you may need to add a touch more broth or hold some back, use your best judgement. Cover tightly and set in fridge overnight.

Day 3 - party day! In the morning, get meat mix out of the fridge and check for consistency - if it's very stiff you can add another 1/4-1/3 cup of bone broth to loosen up, season with salt and add another half a head - one whole head of garlic minced and knead in well. Press into a 9"x13" pan covered in foil, then cover tightly and set back in the fridge for the rest of the day.

About 20 minutes before cooking, pull the meat from the fridge, and fire up the grill. If you don't have a grill available or the weather is not cooperating (as was my case), then a cast iron pan or grill will produce pretty good results. It's time to shape the sausage links - the classic is a bit shorter and thicker than a hot dog, but any oblong shape will do. My favorite hack is to use a spatula to scoop them out of the pan directly into prism-like shapes directly into the pan - less cleanup and some nostalgic reminder of store bought prepped mititei for quick cookouts in my childhood (I don't think my parents ever took on the arduous process of making their own mix, but it was readily available in deli markets).

Cook on all sides until they're nice and brown on the outside and cooked through, but do not overcook! Nothing sadder than a burnt mititel after all that hard work. They should have a slight crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside.

Now let's talk accoutrements. The two must-haves for mititei are toothpicks as utensils (as seen above, two of them per link make a perfect makeshift fork) and mustard as dip. A sharp mustard is preferred, even better if it has some horseradish flavor as well. Next most important is a nice starch/carb side - either fries or bread buns are great. For the meal pictured above, I made both - sourdough dinner rolls and fresh cut fries because why not. While I have certainly eaten my fair share of meat and potato meals in Romania, I decided to also include another staple of summer cookouts in this spread - the tomato cucumber salad. I included thinly sliced red onion, though in the early summer scallions are a great addition as well, and dressed it simply with a touch of olive oil and apple cider vinegar.

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Mititei

Ingredients

• 2lbs ground beef
• 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp ground thyme
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 1 1/2 tsp coriander 
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp anise powder
• 2 heads of garlic
• 2 tsp salt
• soup bones (beef or pork)

Method

1. Day 1 - make bone broth by simmering bones with water on low heat for 3+ hours. Cool completely and chill in the fridge. Remove fat layer from the top and cover to save for the next day.
2. Day 2 -  Mince first head of garlic with a garlic press.
3. Measure out all the dry/powdered spices.
4. Put meat to a large bowl, then add baking soda and lemon juice and mix thoroughly.
5. Add spices, garlic and 1/4 cup bone broth and knead into the meat. 
6. Add another 1/4 cup bone broth gradually while continuing to mix, until a soft but not quite loose mix is achieved - it should mostly keep its shaped if scooped onto a plate.
7. Cover and place in fridge overnight.
8. Day 3, morning - take out bowl with mixture and check for consistency. If it's too stiff, add up to 1/4 cup of bone broth more and mix well.
9. Season with 2 tsp salt and add half - whole head of garlic more (to taste) and mix thoroughly. 
10. Press into foil lined 9"x13" pan, cover and put back into the fridge until ready to cook.
11. Shape into sausage-like rolls and grill on all sides, turning only after one side is well browned to allow for proper maillard reaction and avoid breaking up the mititei as they cook.
12. Cook thoroughly but do not overcook so you don't lose moisture and flavor.
13. Serve hot with mustard and bread or fries. Best enjoyed with a cold beer :)

Notes

• In the United States, thyme isn't exactly like the thyme in Romania, haven't established if it's a different related plant or just a regional difference. I sometimes use ground savory in place of some of the thyme in this recipe because it's a similar flavor but adds complexity.
• I use two whole heads of garlic in total, but if you're not as obsessed with garlic as I am or if your stomach is sensitive to it, you can cut it in half or even a quarter and still get a good amount of flavor.
• In this iteration, I actually used half beef and half ground chicken. I've made these with ground turkey as well, but beware that if the overall mix becomes too lean, you lose out on texture and moisture in the final product. 
• Dijon or dusseldorf mustard are my preferred pairing for mititei, but if you can get your hands on some authentic Eastern European horseradish mustard, go for it!

Rainbow Pasta Project

Welcome to the story of the rainbow pasta project. I haven't tuned a recipe of my own at this point, but I will link to the recipes I've referenced with notes on what challenges I encountered and the cutting / shaping process overall.

You eat with your eyes first, and while it's always true that beautiful presentation enhances a meal, for the kids it's a crucial element for enjoyment. I love having them engage with the making of food and appreciate the beauty in colors and flavors, so I welcome ideas they offer for the kitchen. This rainbow food phase started when the little one got her hands on the Unicorn Food book (non-affiliate link), which she likes to browse like a restaurant menu. One of the ideas in the book that I kept putting off was the rainbow farfalle, not just because pasta from scratch is a more involved undertaking, but because I knew I didn't want to use any food dyes so each of the 6 colors would need individual attention. In the end, I used 4 different recipes and made slight variations to suit my color needs, and I absolutely love how they turned out.

 First up, my all time favorite for quick home made pasta - the basic pasta dough recipe from Anne Burrell (find it here). The olive oil makes it silky and supple, and the eggs add just enough elasticity to make it fairly easy to work with, but not heavy like yolk-forward egg pasta doughs. I made two half batches, with one including beetroot powder for the red color and one with turmeric powder and a pinch of crushed saffron for the yellow colored dough. The fridge rest time is important in allowing the flour to properly hydrate and the dough to relax enough to roll out easily.

Next, I took on the purple and orange doughs - Japanese purple sweet potatoes and regular (orange) sweet potato baked whole in the oven until creamy were used. I found that the purple sweet potatoes had much lower water content and felt starchier in general, so while they needed a dash extra liquid from the recipe directions, the other ones needed quite a bit extra flour - next time I'll first squeeze them in a towel to remove some of that extra moisture first. I used this recipe as a starting point, and aimed for similar consistency to the basic egg pasta doughs from earlier in adjusting the liquid/flour amounts on the fly.

The blue dough was my only vegan dough (recipe) - since I used butterfly pea flowers infused in water (and reduced to concentrate the color) for the hue I wanted, I didn't need the additional liquid of the eggs. It took a bit more kneading to get the texture right on this one, the the protein from the eggs wasn't there to bind it as easily. It still turned out great in the end, and rolled just as well as the other colors.

Last but certainly not least, spinach was the star of the green pasta - I used an old copy of Saveur magazine that I saved in my recipe binder for the dough recipe (link). I chopped the spinach by hand, and while blending it may have resulted in more uniform color, I love the speckled look of the little spinach pieces give the dough. They do make rolling a bit more unwieldy, but it worked well enough. 

I played the shaping of the farfalle by ear/eye, but it's a pretty manually intensive process. I worked with one color at a time while the others continued to rest in the fridge, so they wouldn't dry out. I used the pasta roller attachment of my Kitchen Aid to make long sheets - starting with a few rolls and folds at the #1 setting to get the dough more supple and ready to roll thinner, then passing it through each number one by one until it felt thin enough to cut and shape - I stopped at #5 though #4 would have probably worked as well. Next, I used the wavy blade of my pie dough roller to cut each sheet (the width of the roller) in 3 long and equal strips, then I cut them across with the straight blade in 1" strips. Each ~2.5" by 1" rectangle got pinched in the middle to form that classic farfalle shape (farfalla means butterfly in Italian).

In the end, I only used about half of each color (so 1/4 recipe of each of the recipes I followed) to make farfalle, and decided I would try something else both for variation and ease for the rest. The amount of farfalle that I shaped was enough for 2 meals for our family of four. I rolled out the remaining dough to #5 thickness and passed it through the spaghetti cutter attachment. I used a good amount of flour to keep the strands separated, then put them on parchment in little nests and froze them to keep fresh for a later meal - the spaghetti was also enough for 2 good sized dinners, unsurprisingly.

Last but not least, I wanted to play around with pasta lamination as inspired by a pasta aficionado I admire on Instragram (account link). I probably took it a bit too far putting all 6 colors together, but if you look closely you can still see each individual color, which is so cool! I hand cut these and shaped them into cavatelli as I learned from Chef Keller's Masterclass. The dark colors and disproportionately tiny plate make them look a bit funny in the one picture I captured, but they were delicious and perfectly al dente :)

Overall, this was a pretty involved multi-day project, but the glimmer in the kids' eyes when seeing the colorful pasta was worth it. I really enjoyed how each of the colors had a distinctive flavor as well, and I still have some spaghetti in the freezer for a future meal awaiting me. Pictured above, turkey Lebanese meatballs with roasted mushrooms and a light cream sauce. Below simply buttered farfalle with a dose of fresh garlic served with a quick salad and oven roasted chicken and veggies.