Hot and Steamy

I had no idea what I would write about today. I arrived home around 11:30 pm last night, without my luggage, which chose to spend the night in Minneapolis and arrived on my doorstep this afternoon. After 7 hours of travel and 3 days of pretending not to be 49, I had a deep, much needed, non-snore interrupted sleep. Jeffrey is away on business, sad to come home to an empty bed, but he did leave me his T-shirt and a note on my pillow so I wouldn’t be lonely. Normally I wake up with an idea or have one bouncing around in my head as I drift off to dreamland, but last night the only things rattling around in my head were the remnants of too many margaritas and too much sun. I woke up still tired, but in a good mood, and made it through Monday better than expected. At 6 pm, I was still blog deficient, at 6:30 pm, I was at the butcher counter at the market, and at 6:35 pm, it hit me, this would be the brisket blog. I wasn’t sure how much I could say or who would be interested, but in my 30 minutes at the Big Y, I had 3 conversations with other shoppers also on a brisket mission. People are obviously passionate about this dish, and so it was decided; why not give this beef its blog.

When the lazy days of summer turn quickly into fall and my High Holiday "tickets" arrive in the mail, it can mean only one thing; it’s Brisket time. Today is “Brisket Day” in my house. Unfortunately, today is also broken air-conditioning day, not the ideal environment to have 10 lbs.of steaming, hot brisket in the oven for 5 hours. But alas, the Rosh Hashanah table will not wait and I will sweat through it like my ancestors did (I’m not sure how many generations back I would have to go to find one without air- conditioning). I am fortunate to not be making the entire meal, this year 18 of us will descend upon Sherri and Ron’s house (a million Thank You’s for that), but I will arrive bearing brisket, because it is my specialty. I can’t take ownership for its perfection, it is a skill acquired through many years of watching my mother and father prepare the holy beef. She did the cooking; he was in charge of the heavy lifting and the slicing. The same roles apply in my house, although this year with Jeffrey away, Andrew will have to assume brisket lifting and Jeffrey will arrive home tomorrow for slicing (it is a multi-day process). On a side note, I will also arrive with Apple Crisp (also excellent, which I will prepare fresh on Wednesday). I didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t pulling my weight with a single assignment.

Every family has their own brisket ritual and recipe, pretty sure my mom revamped her more labor intensive process for the current (and I think tastier) version. Through my supermarket study this afternoon I can safely assume that many of us are using some variation of the ketchup, onion soup mix, brown sugar combo (mine has a few other secret ingredients). I determined this though a quick perusal of the contents in other brisket filled carts and the sudden empty space where the Lipton onion soup mix used to be (good thing I had an emergency stash in the cabinet). I have no idea of the science involved in how these unrelated staples magically create the tender deliciousness that will materialize from my oven later this evening, but it is time tested and family approved so no explanation needed. My mother-in-law had a totally different approach, heavy on the onions and black peppercorns, I was not a fan. Jeffrey grew up with those flavors and probably misses it a little bit, but, my house, my brisket. Four sweaty hours from now, more if the fork doesn’t glide easily through the center portion, the aluminum pans will emerge from the oven and my house will smell like Bubbe’s kitchen for the next 3 days. The beautiful “first cut” slabs which barely fit in the pans will have shrunk considerably (if my mom were here she would panic that it wasn’t enough) and the empty space will be filled with the potent brisket gravy. I will patiently (maybe not so much at 11 pm) wait for them to cool down enough to be temporarily separated from their gravy bath and wrapped carefully to spend the night in the fridge getting cold enough to slice (which must be done against the grain or it will be tough, a sin against the brisket gods). Jeffrey and I will argue about which direction is “against the grain” (my parents did too) and he will make multiple sample cuts to prove his point. As I write this it occurs to me, this may be a ploy for advance brisket eating. The gravy will spend the next 2 days alone in the fridge in order for the fat to rise and solidify on top (no fatty brisket from this house), the offending disc will be removed, and the brisket and its juices will be happily remarried and reheated in the Pyrex on Wednesday after sundown.

How is it that I have now waxed poetic about brisket for over 800 words, a dish I only cook and serve twice a year? In reality, by Friday, I will not want to look at brisket again for 6 months and even reading this blog will probably make me a little nauseous. But right at this moment (9:52 pm) it smells pretty darn good down stairs and I might even be salivating a little (could also be that I had Rice Krispies for dinner and I’m hungry). What a crazy week this will be; on Friday I was enjoying a margarita by the pool, on Saturday I was playing beer pong (and swished one in), today I am a Jewish mother making brisket, and on Thursday I will put my heels on and do Temple Time in style. The funny thing is, this week will have a little bit of everything, and each one is a little part of me; Pool Girl, Party Girl, Wife, Mother, Fashionista, Brisket Master... Who says you can’t have it all?