the fenugreek paste of Kayseri: ground seed beaten with crushed garlic and sweet and hot red pepper into a thick russet mud, caked around air-dried beef to make pastırma and eaten in its own right as a meze
Origin: Kayseri, Anatolia, Turkey
From the journey of Fenugreek.
In Turkish, çemen names not the fenugreek plant but the paste made from its seed, and the word is inseparable from pastırma. The butchers of Kayseri, in central Anatolia, working a trade whose Armenian and Ottoman roots run very deep, salt and press whole muscles of beef, hang them to cure in the sharp dry wind of the plateau, and then case them entirely in a thick coat of çemen before drying them a second time. The paste seals the meat against the air, seasons it through, and lends the finished pastırma the warm, hay-sweet bitterness that distinguishes it from every other air-dried beef in the world. Carried west and north by the Ottomans and by the Yiddish-speaking migrations that followed, pastırma became the pastrami of the Balkans, of Romania, and eventually of New York. The paste itself is only fenugreek, garlic, red pepper, salt, and water, but its making is exacting. Ground fenugreek seed is soaked until it swells and turns mucilaginous; crushed garlic goes in by the head, not the clove; sweet Turkish pepper (tatlı biber) supplies the deep russet colour and the body, with hot pepper for heat and a little cumin. Beaten together and rested overnight, the mixture thickens to a stiff, aromatic mud, at once bitter, pungent, and sweet. Beyond its work as a curing coat, çemen is eaten on its own account: thinned with a little olive oil and spread on bread as a meze, spooned beside grilled meat, or stirred into a bean stew. It is one of the very few preparations in Europe or the Near East in which fenugreek is the principal ingredient rather than a seasoning.
Çemen is bitter by design, and its bitterness is balanced by the sweetness of the pepper and the pungency of the garlic rather than removed. Grind whole fenugreek seed fresh if you can; pre-ground fenugreek loses its aroma quickly. The proportions vary across Anatolia: Kayseri makes it garlicky and hot, whilst some western Turkish versions are milder and sweeter. Making pastırma at home requires a long, cold, well-ventilated cure and is a considerable undertaking; the paste itself, however, is the work of ten minutes and a night's patience. A spoonful stirred into a white bean stew (kuru fasulye) is an excellent and thoroughly traditional use.
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