Now let’s cook
Salma. In Kazakh the name hints at the method: the dough is laid into the broth. Bone-in beef, little squares of home-made dough and potatoes.
Ingredients
- 700 g bone-in beefin pieces (the bone simmers with the meat)
- 1500 ml waterplain drinking water
- 7 black peppercornswhole dried black peppercorns
- 2 bay leavesa dried bay leaf
- 7.5 g fine saltordinary table salt
- 1 egglarge hen’s egg, about 50 g without the shell
- ¼ tsp fine saltordinary table salt
- 1 tsp sunflower oila neutral-tasting oil
- 1 tsp waterplain drinking water
- 100 g plain wheat flourwhite wheat flour, called all-purpose in the US
- 100 g onionyellow onion, chopped very finely by hand
- 100 g carrotchopped very finely by hand
- 400 g potatoordinary potatoes: tubers of a similar size cook evenly
Method
Put the beef in a pan, pour in 1.5 l of water and bring to the boil, skimming off the foam. Add 7 peppercorns, 2 bay leaves and the salt.
Turn the heat down and simmer the meat uncovered for about 2 hours, until tender: the thickest part of a piece should reach at least 63 °C.
While the broth cooks, make the dough. Beat the egg, salt, oil and water together with a fork, then add the sifted flour a little at a time and mix to a firm dough. Knead it on a floured surface for at least 5 minutes. Do not taste the raw dough: it contains raw egg.
Wrap the dough in cling film and leave it for 20 minutes.
Roll the dough out as thinly as you can, to 1 mm, and cut it into 2 × 2 cm squares. Spread them out on a board and let them dry a little.
Peel the vegetables. Dice the onion and carrot finely and the potatoes a little larger.
Lift the meat out of the pan, strain the broth and put it back on the heat. When it boils, add the onion and carrot, and when it boils again, the potatoes. Cook over a medium heat for 10–15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.
Meanwhile, take the meat off the bones and cut it into pieces.
Drop the dough squares into the boiling soup and cook until they float, then for 2 minutes more. Take the pan off the heat, cover it and leave the soup to stand for 5 minutes.
Ladle the salma and broth into deep bowls and add some meat to each.
Where this dish comes from
Salma is one of the oldest hot dishes of Kazakh cuisine: a rich broth of horse meat, lamb or beef, with home-made dough rolled thin and cut into narrow strips or small squares. The meat is simmered in large pieces and lifted out, the dough goes into the boiling broth, and salma is served with its broth in bowls, sprinkled with pepper, onion or herbs. Salma is also part of Bashkir and Tatar cooking.
