7

SMOKED MEAT

My son, Max, is Toronto born and bred, and thus it was not until he was six years old that he was formally introduced to the food of his forefathers—smoked meat. I was freshly returned from Montreal, where, as was my habit, on my way out of town I had stopped in at Schwartz’s delicatessen on the Main to collect a whole brisket and all the requisite trimmings—dry karnatzel, sour dill pickles, hot banana peppers, and a few Cott Black Cherry sodas. Following an old routine, around ten thirty in the morning I unwrapped the brisket and sliced off a small taste from the corner of the lean end. It passed. I sliced off another sample just to be absolutely certain. Then, before it was too late, I placed the brisket in my steamer, sealed the lid with plastic wrap and heavy aluminum foil, brought the water to simmer, and—fleeing the irresistible aromas—quit the house in search of some fresh rye bread. I had invited some friends for lunch, and when the first of them turned up salivating at half past noon, I opened the steamer and pierced the brisket with a fork to assess its tenderness. Adjudging it to be à point, I transferred it to the carving board and then ceremoniously prepared for Max his first beautiful sandwich—medium-fat, to get him started on the right track, but a little less of it than you would find stacked between the slices of rye at Schwartz’s itself, in deference to his inexperienced digestive system. This thoughtfulness of mine swiftly proved unnecessary.

“Daddy? You write about food, right?” he asked, expressing interest in my career for the first time as he polished off the first half of his sandwich.

“That’s right,” I replied.

“Then you should write about this!” he said, reaching for his second half.

I had written about this—several times. I could not help it. For Canada has never produced anything that boasts even a small fraction of the culinary renown of Montreal smoked meat. Our culinary identity abroad is more often rooted in unexciting single ingredients than actual dishes—things like maple syrup and “Canadian bacon” (a minor stylistic rethink of a very common food). And with the exception of poutine, a genuine Quebec original, most of our Canadian cuisine has far too much in common with its European antecedents to appear to others as something new. Canadian pea soup is barely distinguishable from its Dutch counterpart. Even tourtière is just another meat pie, its name taken from a common French baking dish (that story of the extinct Quebec carrier pigeon is apocryphal) and its spicing of cloves and cinnamon borrowed from the traditional English and French meat pies of the era of our early settlers. But while smoked meat also has its roots in Europe, it has followed its own decidedly distinct local course—and to a most excellent conclusion.

The story begins in the Levant, long before refrigeration, where methods of preserving beef and other meats (lamb and goat and just about anything else they could get their dirty hands on) involved spicing, pickling, and air-drying. The Armenians called their version pastrama, the Turks made pastirma, the Bulgarians pasturma, and so on. The Ashkenazi Jews who took their beef-based version of the recipe to New York sensibly thought of steaming the meat to tenderize it, then slicing it and serving it hot on rye as pastrami. And while the Montreal take is similar, the primarily Romanian Jewish community who settled there favoured a more assertive spice mix, applied it to a different cut of beef (brisket rather than navel), and—according to the legend of Ben Kravitz, who founded Ben’s Delicatessen in 1909—also added a further Lithuanian twist of smoking the meat over smouldering wood chips before steaming it. And even though the smoking part of that original recipe did not catch on, the new name did, and fast. Within a couple of decades, the spiced, brined, roasted, and steamed brisket we now know as “smoked” meat was being sold under that illogical moniker everywhere from the Rogatko deli, which stood beside the Hollywood Theatre at the corner of the Main and Duluth, to Levitt’s, Putter’s, Schwartz’s, and Chenoy Boys. And by the 1940s, hungry people everywhere started to associate the words Montreal and smoked meat as reflexively as they did Philly and cheese steak, Toulouse and sausage, New England and clam chowder, or even Peking and duck. Montreal smoked meat remains Canada’s only contribution to this exclusive pantheon of great dishes irretrievably linked to an identifiable place, and it is highly doubtful that we will ever come up with another.

And that is just one of many reasons why none of the hundreds of other stories I wrote as a staff writer for the National Post ever provoked anything close to the response generated by a feature published in the spring of 2003 involving a blind taste test of six different kinds of Montreal smoked meat. The notorious event was conducted at the Rosedale home of Giller Prize founder Jack Rabinovitch, my father’s longest-serving friend, from way back at Baron Byng High on Saint-Urbain Street. It was my job to select the delicatessens and order the briskets, and I settled on Charcuterie Hébraïque de Montréal (aka Schwartz’s) and Maison du Bifthèque Main Deli (aka The Main) on Saint-Lawrence Boulevard, then Lesters Deli, on Bernard, in Outremont, and finally the newcomers Abie’s Smoked Meat, in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, and Smoke Meat Pete, in Île Perrot.

Then Jack and I collaborated on putting together an irreproachably impartial tasting panel, selecting names from a pool of friends who shared the unshakable conviction that animal rights began with salt, pepper, and garlic. Being an ex-Montrealer helped, and so did being Jewish—and if you were both, you were a shoo-in. In the end our tasters included Moses Znaimer, the broadcasting visionary who gave us Citytv, agents Michael Levine and Bruce Westwood (Westwood Creative Artists), lawyers Clayton Ruby and Julian Porter, investment guru Gerry Sheff (Gluskin Sheff & Associates), Roots co-founder Michael Budman, Art Shoppe co-owner Allan Offman, York University professor and former Canadian Jewish Congress president Irving Abella, and a handful of journalists—Michael Enright, Joey Slinger, Joe Fiorito, Arlene Perly Rae, and the op-ed director from the National Post, my old high school friend Jonny Kay.

I was in charge of steaming the briskets to a state of tender bliss. Then, working on them sequentially, my brother Noah and I sliced each into sandwiches of approximately equal fattiness, cut these into manageable quarters, arranged them on platters labelled only with single letters for coded identity, and sent them out to the dining room for sampling. There, the gathered guests tasted and rated them, and talked amongst themselves in a manner reflective of their sophistication and accomplishment. Which is to say that after the Montreal Jews ganged up on their Toronto brethren to ridicule the quality of their bagels, everyone next got around to discussing the intersection of two hot topics—economics and smoked meat.

“Here’s a test of age,” Gerry Sheff said, getting that one rolling. “What’s the lowest price you remember for a smoked meat sandwich?”

“Twenty-five cents,” Znaimer replied, without hesitation.

“I remember thirty cents,” Sheff countered. “And Rabinovitch—he remembers two for twenty-five!”

I already knew that to be a fact, because a year and a half earlier, at the surprise seventieth-birthday party my mother had thrown for my father at their flat off Sloane Square, in London, Jack, my father, and one-time McClelland & Stewart proprietor Avie Bennett had gotten into a rousing match of one-upmanship on the identical subject. Meanwhile, in Toronto, as the hours slipped by and the last brisket was carved, the attendees committed their final rankings to scraps of greasy paper, listing the samples in order of preference from first place to sixth (Lesters deli had submitted two kinds of smoked meat—regular and their ne plus ultra dry-aged edition). Then I revealed to everyone which letters corresponded with which delicatessens and began the arduous process of converting rankings into points. For that, I cleverly borrowed the points system then used in Formula 1 racing, which allotted ten points for a first-place finish, six for second, and then four, three, two, and one for the final four positions. But even before I tallied the results, it was clear that Schwartz’s would be the victor, for they had placed first on seven of a possible fourteen ballots. In the end that obviously insurmountable lead translated into ninety-nine points, with Abie’s in second place with seventyseven. Smoke Meat Pete came third with sixty points, with Lesters premium brisket close behind with fifty-eight, the final two markers in the distant rear of the field.

The story was published on a Saturday, and the emails began flooding in that same morning, many of them from smoked meat aficionados living in deprived exile. There were letters from overseas, and hereabouts, from as far afield as the Northwest Territories. Everyone had a reminiscence to share; most ventured at least one contrary opinion. One reader pointed out angrily and rather contemptuously that one of the close-up action photographs included with the story unmistakably showed an unidentified hand clutching a knife that was slicing brisket along rather than against the grain. (Naturally, I replied without checking that the hand belonged to my brother Noah.) In the immediate aftermath, Jack Rabinovitch told me that more people had complained to him about their exclusion from the guest list that night than had ever done so about not making the cut for the Giller Prize gala. To this day, nearly a decade on, he maintains that his annual visit to his urologist still begins with the good doctor bringing up yet again how he was overlooked on smoked meat night.

But looking back now, it is clear that something important was lost amidst all that controversy: that, what with the small sample size, occasional slicing issues, and other problems of methodology, the twelve-point difference between long-time favourite Schwartz’s and the newcomer Abie’s was so slender as to be smaller than the margin of error. The future was already foretold.

My paternal grandmother was an unspeakable cook. So more often than not my father’s idea of comfort food had less to do with what he had encountered in childhood than with what he learned in later, happier teenage years, when he moved alone to Europe. In other words, for him tortellini in brodo trumped kreplach, and with rare exceptions pâté de campagne bested chopped liver. So when it came to my mother’s cooking, it never really mattered much to him if she was in the mood to cook something French, English, or Italian; as long as it was rustic and unfussy and did not involve too many vegetables, he was happy as could be. Almost. For even if his mother had been incapable of making a matzo ball soup that was not covered with a slick of yellow chicken fat, or a boiled chicken that did not bounce and jiggle when it made first contact with the knife, there was a small handful of things that she had got right enough to ensure that their flavours still had tenacious reach into his later years. For example latkes, which now and then my mother made for him—sensibly frying them in olive oil instead of schmaltz. Or her uniquely refined helzel, for which she used the neck of a goose instead of chicken, marinated its stuffing with a good dose of cognac, and browned it in place of the customary pallor. But aside from these rare exceptions, the Jewish kitchen was not a domain in which my mother cared to venture, not even for him. So on those rare occasions when she travelled somewhere without my father, within half an hour of her departure we were generally in the car and bound for a big delicatessen to stock up on those delicacies that, in addition to declining to cook for him, she discouraged keeping in the refrigerator for reasons of taste, health, and waistline.

So, unsupervised, up at the Brown Derby (on Van Horne) or the Snowdon Deli (on Snowdon) my father would buy heaps of sliced smoked meat, and—for variety—roast brisket, too. He would pick up big tubs of chopped liver, monstrously thick Coorsh salami, ropes of karnatzel, boxes of potato and kasha knishes—and, in his notion of a concession to a balanced diet, some sour pickles and coleslaw. And as soon as we were home he would enthusiastically tuck in. If it was morning, he would toss up one of his signature dishes, a sort of Ashkenazi frittata, which involved many barely whisked eggs, assorted hunks of Coorsh salami and karnatzel, and sometimes a few slices of smoked meat, too, all cooked together in a buttery cast-iron skillet until well set, and then slipped onto the plate with an audible thud, like a small manhole cover. If, however, it was lunchtime or later, my father would put together something a little more substantial. He would begin by popping a selection of knishes into the oven, and while impatiently waiting for them to heat through, slather a vast portion of chopped liver onto a slice of rye, and then assemble a sandwich or two with his smoked meat and roast brisket to plate with the knishes, pickles, and coleslaw. Either way, he referred to the plate he assembled upon our return home as his “Jewish sleeping pill.” And sure enough, half an hour after tucking in, he would be contentedly out cold on the sofa.

It was from that same podium that on other days—such as on the occasion of a particularly nasty blizzard of the sort for which school was cancelled even in Montreal—he would rise up on one elbow and bellow to the house at large, “Who is my favourite child?” Any one of the five of us too young to yet recognize this as a trick question (like me) or too slow to get out of sight before being noticed (like me) would be caught in his dragnet, and summoned. And once sofa-side, it would be explained that he was in terrible need of a couple of warming medium-fats from Schwartz’s post-haste, but, alas, he was far too busy to make the trek himself. So he would fish some money out of his pocket for a cab and his fix, and dispatch the favourite child (me) or two (usually my sister Emma, for protection) into the howling storm.

This is how, when I was far too young and small to see over the counter at Schwartz’s delicatessen (or the snowbanks that lined the sidewalk outside), I met Jan Haim—or Johnny, as everyone knew him. Johnny had arrived in Montreal from Romania in February 1964, and he had been working at Schwartz’s ever since. He started in the kitchen, and by the time I met him was the manager, perpetually stationed at the takeout counter near the front door. When I turned up in those early days, shivering, a little tentative amidst the alarming bustle, Johnny would lean forward over the counter (as far as his belly would allow) and beam a warm smile down my way. Then, whatever the length of the queue in front of me, he would promptly hand me down my father’s bag of hot medium-fats. The sandwiches were always ready because my father called ahead—not to make his kids’ life any easier, I suspect, so much as to assuage his fears that in our incompetence we might mess up the order and return with a medium or, horrors, a lean sandwich by mistake.

But with the passage of time and age came increased responsibility. Soon, I was permitted to place my father’s order by telephone all by myself, which is how I learned that Schwartz’s was listed in the Montreal White Pages as the Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen, an entry conveniently appearing immediately below the all-block-letter listing for the Montreal Heart Institute. From there I graduated to placing the takeout order on-site, just like everyone else did. And many years later, when my parents moved from Westmount to downtown, and I was a Schwartz’s habitué in my own right, and old enough for my father to take me along to happy hour for company, I would sometimes fetch sandwiches for us all for dinner. Because I had worked out by then that, even though my father adored Schwartz’s, he did not much like going there. For despite his special customer benefits—like never having to wait in line, and having waiters offer him a first grab at other customers’ french fries as they passed by our table—he did not care for all the attention and preferred to eat at home. I was collecting one such order in 1994, in the middle of a dinner rush, when along with my bag of sandwiches Johnny handed me a copy of my father’s just-published memoir about Israel and his school friends who had made aliya, This Year in Jerusalem. Johnny told me how much he had enjoyed it, and asked if I could possibly arrange for Dad to sign it. So the next time I visited I brought Johnny back his copy. My father had inscribed it, “For Johnny—The King of Smoked Meat.” Wow, did Johnny ever look chuffed. He beamed and his eyes moistened. The sandwiches were on the house.

Emboldened, on a subsequent visit that conveniently corresponded with a lull in the afternoon rush, I asked Johnny if he might give me a tour of the operations out back—the inner sanctum, where the briskets-to-smoked-meat magic unfolded. Many a regular had caught a brief glimpse of the room as the kitchen door swung open and shut, but very little was ever revealed. The Schwartz’s kitchen remained a place of considerable mystery and a source of much debate. Some claimed that at Schwartz’s the smoked meat really was smoked. Others ventured the contrary, insisting instead that it was brined, like corned beef. “Come,” Johnny said, and led the way.

I was jittery with excitement—or at least, I would have been, if I was not struggling to digest two medium-fats. Johnny pushed open the kitchen door and I followed, to discover—well, not much. For while the truth was at last at hand, the most captivating thing about the kitchen at Schwartz’s turned out to be that there was hardly anything there. Instead of the expected crazed bustle of a restaurant kitchen, there was only one person on hand. His station consisted of a big sink full of potatoes, a deep-fryer, and that was about it. Where most kitchens have printers spewing detailed orders for the chef to call out to his crew, this singleitem operation was equipped only with a bell, obviously linked to the doorbell that I had so often observed waiters pushing just below the cash behind the counter up front. Evidently, a long or a short pulse signalled whether the fries being summoned were for there (on a plate) or to go (in a soon-to-be-translucent paper bag), and the number of bleeps that followed indicated the number of orders required.

One mystery solved; but the bigger one would take more exposition. First Johnny showed me the raw whole briskets. The smallest of them was easily twelve or thirteen pounds—far larger than any that they sell. Johnny explained that they shrink at least thirty percent in the curing and cooking process. The first step is to roll them in Schwartz’s secret Bessarabian spice mix until they are completely coated with it. Then the briskets are carted upstairs to the cold room, where they are packed snugly in huge plastic barrels, stacked nearly to the top. They marinate and cure thus for ten days. They begin this process dry, but briskets nearing the end of the curing cycle are completely submerged in liquid. Which technically means that smoked meat is brined. But there is a caveat: no brine is ever prepared, and no liquid is added to the barrels at all. It is simply extracted from the briskets themselves by the salt in the spice mix in which they are enveloped (we are not dealing with quality dry-aged meat here, but rather the cheapest possible raw product, wet-aged in vacuum-packaging, and sodden). Once cured, the briskets are drained and returned to the small kitchen below. There they are tied with twine and hung from a rack. This rack in turn is wheeled into a massive, gas-fired oven, and the briskets are roasted there at a modest temperature (about 275°F) for close to five hours, during which time fat drips onto the flames below and a little smoke is generated—but not so much that you would call the process smoking. Once cooked, the briskets are transferred either to the holding fridge or to the steam table for a final, tenderizing two or three hours—whatever it takes for the meat to yield without objection when pierced with a fork. Now I finally knew the process. All I needed was the recipe for the spice mix.

In the early 1990s my parents sensibly took to quitting Montreal for the winter in favour of far more agreeable Chelsea, London, where, like the rest of the family, I would join them for my Christmas holiday. As the only one of us headed their way from Montreal, I was always charged with a special shopping list. It began with two dozen bagels from the Maison du Bagel Saint-Viateur (aka the Bagel Factory) and a large, whole brisket from Schwartz’s. Which is how, late one dark and stormy December morning in the early nineties, I found myself in the eerily empty delicatessen at the unfashionable lunch hour of 11 a.m., sharing the counter with just a handful of others customers—mostly uniformed cops, freshly off shift. I was hunkering down over a couple of medium-fats when suddenly the lights went out. Johnny did not miss a beat: he reached under the counter, produced a candle, lit it, and put it down in front of my plate.

“You know I love Schwartz’s, Johnny,” I said. “But I have to come clean and tell you that I never imagined I would ever enjoy a meal here by candlelight.”

He laughed hard, his belly heaving in the flickering shadows. Then I explained that I needed the usual shipment for my father packed for my flight to London that evening: one wellwrapped brisket of his favoured size of about eight pounds, a little karnatzel, and I was done. So Johnny opened the sliding glass door to the cool alcove inside the front display window and began rummaging around in the stacks of briskets there as if he were searching for a stick of just the right shape in a pile of kindling. Soon he had selected four candidate briskets that looked good enough for my father and appeared to match his weight request, too. But the Schwartz’s scale is digital, and what with the power outage, was unusable. So Johnny started weighing briskets in his hands, holding one in each side by side, and hefting them up and down for comparison until he found the one he wanted. “This is a lovely one,” he said at last, smiling down at the chosen one. Then he wrapped it in butcher’s paper, bagged it with the karnatzel, and handed it to me with a bill for the cashier, handwritten on a piece of greasy paper. I was intrigued to see that according to feedback from Johnny’s forearm, my brisket did not weigh eight pounds, but rather, precisely seven and a half.

Back home I wrapped the brisket in an additional couple of garbage bags and taped them up, but I could still smell its rich aroma. So out at Mirabel, fearing that the brisket would provoke a disturbance in the hungry Air Canada cabin somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, I decided to ignore my father’s strict instructions to take it carry-on and instead stuffed it into the side pocket of the suitcase that I was checking. Then at Heathrow, I waited and waited by the carousel; no case. So fifteen minutes after the rest of the passengers from my flight had dispersed, I reported the loss to the Air Canada desk and headed for Chelsea. My father took the news badly. For the next two days, whenever the phone rang he grabbed for it with uncharacteristic enthusiasm—and then disappointment crossed his face. Finally, on the third day, Air Canada called to say that my case had turned up at Charles de Gaulle and would be arriving in Chelsea by minicab that same evening. It did, and to our astonishment the blessed French had rejected the smoked meat: it was still there in the side pouch, undisturbed. And what’s more, after three days without refrigeration, it was perfectly fine.

“What a beautiful aroma,” I said to my father. “They should bottle it and make perfume out of it. Imagine, women wearing a few drops dabbed behind their ears.”

He did imagine—and far better than me. For he was writing Barney’s Version at the time. And when I picked up the novel a few years later, Barney had poached my idea and run with it. “You know if you had really, really been intent on entrapping me on my wedding night, you wicked woman, you would not have dabbed yourself with Joy, but in Essence of Smoked Meat,” Barney tells Miriam one night in their happy times. “A maddening aphrodisiac, made from spices available in Schwartz’s delicatessen. I’d call it Nectar of Judea and copyright the name.”

Meanwhile back in Montreal, Johnny was not doing so well. Three decades of slicing smoked meat was wearing at him. While his belly was as robust as ever, his hair was now white and thinning, and more importantly, his once incomparable slicing arm was on the fritz. After two unsuccessful operations, his rotator cuff remained in apparently irreparable tatters. So in 1998, two years after Schwartz’s was sold to its long-time accountant Hy Diamond, Johnny Haim decided that thirty-five years of his life was enough to give to one delicatessen—even Schwartz’s—and he retired. It was odd and disorienting walking in and not finding him at his station. But not that much—because his son Abie, then a fourteen-year Schwartz’s veteran in his own right, took over as manager in his stead. Their physical resemblance was uncanny, so when you walked into Schwartz’s there was still a familiar face at the carving station after all.

But then two years later Abie moved on, too, decamping like so many Jews from the old neighbourhood had done before him for the Anglo enclave of the West Island. Which is where, in 2000, he opened Abie’s Smoked Meat, in a strip mall on Boulevard Saint-Jean in Dollard-des-Ormeaux. The place does not look at all like Schwartz’s. It is modern, spacious, and airy. Instead of ancient, yellowing newspaper clippings, sports memorabilia hang on the walls. But at the back of the room near the service bar you will find a large painting of Johnny in his element: behind a steam table, holding up a large, steaming-hot brisket stabbed on a carving fork, and getting set to carve. The opening of Abie’s prompted Johnny out of retirement briefly, and for the first couple of years he dabbled here and there making sure every brisket was just so. “One batch of briskets might take two and a half hours on the steam table. Another batch can take just two,” Abie explained to me at the time. “Fifteen minutes more or less can be the difference between perfect and near to perfect. And that’s where my father comes in, and takes his fork out. He pokes, he prods. And that is the final judgment.”

Now and then when I dropped in, I even found Johnny behind the counter, knife in hand, once again hand-slicing the best medium-fats in Montreal. And I say the best with measured consideration. Because a medium-fat at Abie’s always tastes just like it used to at Schwartz’s in its prime. The raw product is of at least equal quality. The spice mix is identical. So is the process. Even the charcoal grill at Abie’s comes from the same supplier and matches the design of the one that Schwartz’s used for ninety years (until it was ditched in favour of propane late in the Hy Diamond era). The only major equipment difference at Abie’s is that the roasting oven is modern convection, and has digital controls even for humidity levels, so that the product that comes out of it is far more consistent than at Schwartz’s, where even in the good years, a dry, salty sandwich was something one encountered more than occasionally.

“In this business,” Abie told me once, “you’re only as good as your last medium-fat.”

But this is far truer for him and other newcomers than it is for an institution like Schwartz’s, which despite its cramped premises increases production year after year, and now pumps out more than ten thousand pounds of smoked meat each week. In my experience, the strain of volume shows. When news broke that Diamond had sold the Schwartz’s restaurant, building, and condiments business to Mr. Céline Dion and his partners for close to ten million dollars, I did not share others’ alarm at the prospect of decline, expansion, and the inevitable Schwartz’s outlet at McCarran International in Las Vegas. For decline had set in already, when Diamond expanded takeout operations into an adjacent space on Saint-Lawrence Boulevard, peddling Schwartz’s T-shirts and coffee mugs. I actually gave up on the place altogether in the summer of 2009, on the occasion of my fifth consecutive visit rewarded with a subpar sandwich, this one so under-steamed and chewy that I threw it in the nearest rubbish bin in disgust (it was takeout). My last perfect sandwich there was consumed at roughly twelve thirty on September 15, 2007, when the affable manager Frank Silva indulged me with a second Schwartz’s first to go with my meal by candlelight with Johnny: he allowed me to reserve a table for twelve at Saturday lunch. That sandwich was bliss, and so was the rest of the day (I got married four hours later). It was a great note to end on—and that is the way I like to remember the great delicatessen. And of course I always keep a jar of their steak spice on hand, and can have a sniff when feeling sentimental.

For the steak spice smells almost identical to their briskets. The two spice mixes are obviously closely related. All the same, staff at both Schwartz’s and Abie’s have long cautioned me for reasons unspecified against attempting to use their steak spice to make smoked meat. And while both delicatessens sell the steak spice, neither sells the brisket mix, and they have always refused me flat out when I begged for some. Until one glorious afternoon in early 2010, when during my customary stop at Abie’s on my way into Montreal, I finally had a breakthrough. When I finished up my plate of medium-fats, I had asked Abie once again what the difference was between the two spice blends, and—be it from attrition or some other reason—to my considerable surprise he gave me a proper answer.

“Basically, the brisket mix has a lot less salt,” he said. “All you have to do is mix in a bit of water before you rub it on the brisket. Do you want some?” I was barely out the door before I had the cell phone out and was ringing my wife in Los Angeles, where she was travelling on business.

“You won’t believe this,” I said, feverish with excitement. “But in my jacket pocket I am packing the secret of Montreal smoked meat.”

Back in Toronto a few days later, I sat at my desk gazing incredulously at my pouch of spice, feeling rather like Station Chief Strangways must have done once he and Quarrel finally smuggled those rock samples out of Crab Key. Like him, all I needed was a trustworthy lab to do the analysis—and not Professor Dent. Consulting the internet, I settled on Gelda Scientific, a Mississauga lab that specializes in food and beverage chemical testing, and wrote them an email. But the answer that came back was not good: reverse analysis of steak spice was definitely not their thing. However, Technical Sales Manager Damien Boyd did helpfully suggest that I contact Newly Weds Foods, a huge international that specializes in spice mixes, among other things. And indeed Newly Weds eventually got back to me with an offer to duplicate my sample for somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000—but even at that they would not tell me what was in it. (This, I learned, is standard. Revealing the formula would obviate the profit-earning contract to manufacture the duplicate.) Newly Weds suggested that I instead contact the Guelph Food Technology Centre, and so it came to pass that I found myself on the telephone late that Friday afternoon with their manager of business development, Karen McPhee, who was very nice and helpful but had never heard of Abie’s delicatessen or even Schwartz’s and possibly not smoked meat either, and obviously thought that my request and I were a bit strange.

“Why exactly are you doing this?” she demanded, finally. “For Jews everywhere,” I answered, in a failed bid to clarify things.

Eventually I gave up on modern science and dumped the stuff out on a large sheet of white paper in my kitchen, pulled it apart grain by grain, and examined it with a magnifying glass borrowed from the drawer of my boxed Compact OED. What I could not identify by sight I tasted, and in a short time I had an ingredients list: cracked black pepper, chili flakes, crushed coriander, yellow mustard seeds, caraway or possibly dill or fennel seeds, garlic flakes, onion flakes, and a whole lot of salt. I mixed up a batch, added a little water, and rubbed it all over a nine-pound dry-aged brisket freshly procured from my butcher, Cumbrae’s. Then I rubbed the Abie’s spice just as tenderly all over the control brisket (same size, same supplier). I placed each in a separate container in preparation for their stay in the cold room. “You don’t flip them, nothing,” Abie had said to me. “You just leave it for ten days and let nature do its beautiful work.” When I finally cooked them, the control brisket was terrific, and my first effort was very tasty and nicely textured—but inside it was brown, like roast or barbecued brisket, instead of sporting the characteristic pinkish red hue of Montreal smoked meat. I stared at them side by side and thought hard. Suddenly I remembered that brisket of my father’s that got lost in Paris without a refrigerator for three whole days yet emerged unscathed. Only one preservative could ensure that: saltpetre, which preserves colour as well as the meat. I had the formula at last.

My Montreal Smoked Meat

The odd fact of the matter is that even the most authentic Montreal smoked meat is not smoked: it is instead brined, and then slow-roasted, and then steamed. This recipe gives smokier results. If you prefer something more akin to the product at, say, Schwartz’s, simply cut back on the smoking time, and exchange it for an equal amount of time in the oven at the same temperature.

1/3 cup (75 mL) kosher salt

1/4 cup (60 mL) cracked black pepper

1/4 cup (60 mL) yellow mustard seeds

2 tbsp (30 mL) cassonade or other brown sugar

1 tbsp (15 mL) saltpetre

1 tbsp (15 mL) caraway, dill, or fennel seeds, toasted

1 tbsp (15 mL) garlic flakes

1 tbsp (15 mL) onion flakes

1 tbsp (15 mL) chili flakes

1 tbsp (15 mL) hot paprika

1 tbsp (15 mL) dried juniper berries, crushed

1 beef brisket, fat cap on, about 10 lb (4.5 kg)

Combine salt, pepper, mustard seeds, sugar, saltpetre, caraway, garlic flakes, onion flakes, chili, paprika, and juniper berries in a bowl, add 2 tbsp (30 mL) cold water, mix well, and let sit for 5 minutes. Place brisket in a casserole or some other container, spread half the spice mix on the top side, flip, and cover the second side. Cover container and place store at 50˚F (10˚C) for 8 days (a cold room is ideal, but you can also use your second refrigerator set at its lowest possible setting).

Smoke the brisket, flipping it periodically, at 275˚F (140˚C) until the internal temperature reads 170˚F (75˚C)––5 to 6 hours. Transfer to the rack of a steamer and steam until the meat yields easily when pierced with a fork––about 2 hours. Slice against the grain and serve on rye bread with mustard.

Suggested side dishes: Jewish sorbet (sour pickles) and coleslaw.