ONE OF THE things I gave up–at least for a while–when my family and I moved across the country, was my best sister-in-the-kitchen friend. I consult Chris about just about every aspect of life, but over 18 years of friendship, cooking together has become one of our greatest pleasures. Whether impromptu cookie baking, weekend trips or elaborate feasts for our families, we spent many days in her kitchen or mine, chopping, measuring and stirring together the minute and meaningful details of our lives.
Now that I’m in New York and she’s (sniff) still in California, we have to make do with phone and email, and too-infrequent visits. I called her when I was planning a menu to serve to a Famous Foodie; she endorsed my choices and added some of her own. Chris called me when she was planning a fancy cocktail party for friends.
Chris may not have won her temple’s first annual ‘briskoff’ with this recipe, but I know her latest brisket variation will be one I’ll enjoy.
Somehow, the bond of cooking gives us the motivation we need to pick up the phone, or send an email, to stay in touch about not just the big events, but the day to day–the stuff you really miss when you leave a friend behind. So I was thrilled to receive an email from her earlier this week outlining, in precise detail, her efforts to win her temple’s first annual “briskoff.” Brisket is one of her specialties, and recently, mine. I had never eaten it before Chris made it for a Passover seder she invited us to about eight years ago. It was so delicious–and my husband was so enthusiastic–that I determined to learn to make it, too.
I quickly found a favorite preparation, from which I never stray: brisket braised in stout outlined in luscious detail in one of my favorite cookbooks, Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin.
Chris is more creative about brisket. She experiments–like with this latest recipe of hers.
CHRIS’ BEST-EVER BRISKET
4 marrow bones
5-pound brisket–the point end is Chris’s favorite–with some fat left on top
Kosher salt
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 onions, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
5 leeks, white parts only, chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed
3 bottles red wine
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
3 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
4 stalks of celery, stringed and cut into chunks
Handful of fresh thyme
Other vegetables as desired: diced turnips, carrots and parsnips, say, a cup of each, or more to taste
- Preheat oven to 350 and put the marrow bones in to roast.
- Give the brisket a little massage with some nice kosher salt.
- Sear the brisket in 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, making sure both sides are crunchy.
- Add the remaining olive oil to the pan (on top of the nice fat the brisket left behind) and sauté the onions, shallots and leeks. Once they are translucent, add the garlic.
- Pour the red wine (inexpensive but drinkable is fine) and balsamic vinegar into your biggest LeCreuset or Dutch oven. Bring to a low boil and light on fire. Turn off the lights and watch the show. When the fire gets so big it’s about to melt the microwave in your too-small kitchen, turn down the flame and the fire will extinguish itself.
- Add carrots, celery, thyme and the onion mixture to the wine. Add brisket and push it down so it is covered. Add the other vegetables.
- Remove marrow bones from oven. Add three to the pot (and reserve one for your dog).
- Turn down oven to 300 and cook, covered, for 5-6 hours.
- When done cooking, remove the brisket, chill the sauce and take off the solidified fat. Reduce all that yummy wine to a nice, thick sauce.
“Serve, and (don’t win?) the briskoff,” says Chris as the final step in the recipe. “I think people are too addicted to their Heinz chili sauce brisket to appreciate mine,” she adds.
Postscript: Indeed, she didn’t win. But she swears this is her best brisket ever, and that’s saying something. That sister-friend of mine can cook. Do you or a sister or sister-friend have a brisket variation to share?
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I’m going to try it, so I can be a shiksa goddess wife to my devout Jewish hubbie. I linked to you and your excellent column, girlfriend. I finally learned how :-)
Oy vey. A flaming brisket? What a concept! My (Jewish) mother would be scared to death to try this!
The briskoff. I’m kvelling. This is sisterhood, this sharing of the recipe. This is memoir, too. And it is life at its best. I, too, share recipes with a non-biological sister, my friend Elizabeth in Maine, and in the margins of the older, printed-out recipes are notes on who she fed these foods to and what she served with the meals. In the email versions she now provides the story as a small appetizer, a luscious preamble to the work and the food. Wonderful.
Hilary, your husband already thinks you’re a goddess, shiksa or otherwise. And Dan–maybe you should make this for your mom! And Marion–as always, you have the best things to say. Maybe we should have a TSP sisters briskoff? But what would the vegetarian sissies eat??
Tofu? Can we have Tof-off?
It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. I do make a mean tofu fried rice, though….
Vegetarian or not, I have a suggestion: You and Chris both make the brisket with this as the concurrent background music to the torching part (also very effective w/flaming Japanese food, apparently).
I keep re-reading the recipe–do you have to light it on fire on the stove? Truly, I’d be worried about an explosion or something. (Yes, I am a scared-y cat.) Can I bring the pot to the boil, bring outside and put it down on the snow and the light it on fire and then bring back inside?
Dan,
Where do you live? You can come over and I will, indeed, light a pot on fire indoors, on my stove, for you.
This all started with a Daniel Bouloud short rib recipe. Really, you pour the wine in a very large enameled cast iron skillet, get it boiling a bit, and light it on fire. I am in temporary housing and I have a gas stovetop under a plastic microwave and I must admit, I chickened out after a few minutes. At home I have more space over my range and a hood that seems pretty fire resistant, so I just let those flames dance. It must be done at night with the lights low. It’s just beautiful. If you keep a lid close by and the fire freaks you out you can always just put the lid on.
Note to all: It wasn’t my best ever. But it was good. My best ever is one elusive brisket that Paige had once for Passover. Sadly, I rarely write down recipes, so that one is gone for good. And, unfortunately, with each subsequent brisket, that one becomes even larger than its already larger-than-life status.
Other note: The Suzanne Goin brisket recipe that Paige loves got second place this year. That is a very good recipe.
It’s not the brisket from that Passover that’s elusive, it’s the tzimmes with orange juice. But more important–what did win first place?? And Dan, I’ll be happy to give you a flambée lesson sometime…
Now that we all keep recipe boxes in our computers, I miss the days of envelopes arriving in the mailbox, return address MRS – my nonbio sis Marion Roach, sharing recipes and party gossip from a few states away. The more grease/gravy/frosting stains that showed up as black blobs on the photocopied recipe, the better the final dish was likely to be. We shared a sick glee in finding dishes that looked like traditional Midwestern fare but tasted much, much better. (Think incredibly delicious meatloaf with ingredients your mother-in-law never heard of.) The notes in the margin, they’re as good as the recipe, and they’re what I miss about the old “Paper Age.” But MRS can now get her recipes and her gossip to me much faster.
Oh boy, do I have a meatloaf recipe for you. I love meatloaf, and I love my version, or I did, until I ate this one this weekend..oh my goodness. This is definitely the definition of “incredibly delicous meatloaf with ingredients your mother in law never heard of” (or, at the very least, never thought of putting into meatloaf. Does anyone else have recipes like the ones Elizabeth’s talking about? Like her, I’m all about the reinvention of comfort food!
You win. My now ex-mother-in-law would never have dreamed of putting prunes in meatloaf. Nor would she make it out of a loaf pan – which is how MRS and I like it because of the increased Crust-to-Other Stuff ratio.
Speaking of Sisters and Comfort Food, I just got off the phone with my stomach growling because my sister described the four-cheese mac and cheese she made for dinner. I think the Gruyere is what got me, as I stare at a pantry shelf full of Annie’s.