Onion-Braised Brisket

I can't remember the last time we had company for dinner.  More recently, the idea of catching up to the household chores and making a dinner has seemed insurmountable.  So, we've been opting to go out for dinner with friends instead.  

A few weeks ago, I had a moment of denial (about the state of my house) and decided to invite a couple of friends for a pre-Passover seder.  I call it "pre-Passover"because we did it on Sunday night rather than Monday, after work.  Also, it wasn't really a seder.  We just ate a nice meal with some of the foods we'd traditionally eat at Passover and were motivated by knowing that our families would be doing the same thing in different parts of the world.  

There are a few things I love about Passover.  Yes, of course, they're mostly food related.  I love chicken soup with matzo balls.  I love charoset (with or without horseradish).  Last, but not least, I love horseradish and any dish that lets me indulge in my love for horseradish.  Food aside, I like the getting together with family aspect too, assuming those around the table have similar ideas about how long a seder should last.  

I recently received a sample of the second edition of The Healthy Slow Cooker.  After taking a first look through, I was immediately drawn to the brisket recipe.  

Onion-Braised Brisket

2 tbsp olive oil, divided

4 - 5 lbs. double beef brisket, trimmed

4 onions, thinly sliced on the vertical

1 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp cracked black peppercorns

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 cup dry red wine

1/4 cup tomato paste

1 cup beef stock

2 tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup beef stock

1/2 cup finely chopped parsley leaves

1. In a skillet, heat 1 tbsp of oil over medium-high heat.  Add brisket and brown well on both sides, about 6 minutes.  Transfer to slow cooker stoneware.

2. Add remaining tbsp of oil to stoneware (note: I think this should say skillet instead of stoneware).  Add onions and cook, stirring until they begin to turn golden, about 5 minutes.  Add garlic, thyme, salt and peppercorns and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.  Add vinegar, mustard and wine and bring to a boil.  Cook, stirring and scraping up brown bits from bottom of pan, for 2 minutes.  Stir in tomato paste and stock.  

3.  Transfer to slow cooker stoneware.  Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-5 hours, until brisket is very tender.  

4.  Transfer meat to a deep platter, slice and keep warm.  Transfer sauce to a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce head and simmer for 5 minutes to slightly reduce.  Remove from heat and add cornstarch solution, stirring until sauce thickens.  Pour over meat and garnish with parsley.

Verdict: The brisket was a bit of a saga.  Not at all due to the recipe itself.  I had to do quite a bit of work to get the brisket.  Initially, I figured I would just get a brisket from the kosher butcher.  But then I saw the price: $58 for 1.86 kg (4.1 lbs.).   There was no way I was going to spend that much on a brisket, particularly if no one eating it cared if it was kosher.  So, then I tried a non-kosher butcher.  They were $6.99/lb.  The price was better, but I wanted to check with one other place -- the beef coop I  often order my beef from, Fitzroy Beef Farmers.  It was a bit of a long shot because the only way you can get beef from them at this time of year is to pick it up at their drop off locations (a random parking lot) on their predetermined drop off days.  But luck was on my side.  Their briskets were $4.50/lb. and they had a drop off scheduled for the day before my dinner party.  Sold!  I requested a 4-5 lb. brisket.  

My next challenge came upon pick up.  You don't always know what you're going to get size-wise.  So, when R came home with a 7.29 lb. (frozen) brisket, I was a bit nervous about doing it in the slowcooker.  

  

Since it was frozen, I really couldn't separate it.  The brisket couldn't even fit into my largest frying pan!

I quickly gave up hope of getting this thing in my moderately-sized slow cooker.  I took out the turkey roaster instead.

That may have decreased the liquid.  That, and the fact that I didn't double the other portions of the recipe.  There wasn't enough sauce leftover to do step four.  But, there was still plenty of flavour.  It ended up coming out like pulled beef.  Everyone loved it!  I would definitely make this again.  Sorry for the lack of a nicely plated picture.  There was too much going on to pull that together.

Aside from the brisket, we had potatoes, chicken soup and matzo balls, salad, matzo...

...and my other two favourite: charoset and horseradish.  I used this recipe for the charoset with some modifications such as using grape juice instead of wine and almonds instead of walnuts.  Aside from that, I added more cinnamon and played with the quantities a bit to get the flavour I wanted.

It was so nice to have these leftovers to enjoy all week.

We didn't have as much leftovers of the dessert my friend brought, but it was delicious too.

Hamentashen for Purim

Purim this year begins the evening of March 15 and ends the evening of March 16.  This celebration commemorates the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia from the evil plot of destruction from Haman.  He was not successful.  Each year, we mark this holiday by recanting the story (the megillah).  During the storytelling whenever the name of Haman is said out loud, the audience use noise makers to erase the sound of his name while stomping their feet.

Purim was always one of my very favourite holidays; essentially the only time as children we were encouraged to make lots of noise.  The custom is to make hamentashen, a triangular shaped cookie filled with one or many different fillings.  The triangle shape is meant to be symbolic of Haman's ears. We also take time during this holiday to make up small food gifts to share with family and friends, usually some cookies and also to perform acts of kindness for those in need.  That's not to say we don't display acts of kindness regularly but during this holiday it's somehow more purposeful.

The most fun of Purim as children was to dress up (kind of like Halloween costuming) in the images of the time.  You see alot of queen, bad guy, and hero type costumes.

I've always made hamentashen and this year is no different.  The recipe I used for years seemed just a little too cake like so I surfed to find a new one to try.  I think I hit pay dirt  when I checked out The Shiksa.  I was so happy to find two different dough recipes, one with butter and a second without.  She also has a wonderful tutorial on her blog and I actually used her method this year and it worked beautifully.  Once you get a rythym going with the assembly it's a breeze.

A good tip is to make your filling first.  The dough, if left too long can go dry.  I made a batch of prune filling (very typical filling for these cookies)

Prune Filling

1 lb (2 cups) soft dried prunes
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
zest of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Put ingredients into a food processor and pulse until smooth.

Dough

2 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 tsp orange zest
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1.  Whisk eggs, sugar, canola oil, orange zest and vanilla together.    I did everything by hand - you don't need a mixer.

2.  In a second bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.

3.  Slowly add the flour mixing in a circular motion with a wooden spoon until flour is incorporated.  Hand knead until you get to a smooth and slightly tacky consistency.

4.  Lightly flour your work surface and your rolling pin and roll out to approximately 1/4".  The thinner the dough, the crispier the cookie.  Using a 3" cutter or glass, cut rounds and put a tsp of filling in the center of each cookie.  Fold over left side towards the center, then the right side to join to the top third of the cookie.  Bring up the bottom part of the dough to pinch the ends.

5.  Bake at 350 F for about 20 minutes (my oven was 18 minutes)

** Make sure you visit The Shiksa's blog for an amazing tutorial on how to assemble the hamentashen.  Her method is great and no lost filling.  Yield is about 3 dozen so tomorrow I'm making a double batch with apricot filling and poppy seed filling.

Baby Food

Written several days ago:

Can I just take a moment to have a brief pity party?

After months of questions about when I would come to Winnipeg (the coldest city with a population over 500,000...also the city I grew up in), I finally caved.  R was planning to be out of town for work, so I decided to take E to go meet the rest of my side of the family.

Six days seemed like more than enough time to spend here in the winter.  Until...I got an ear infection that wouldn't go away.

Fast forward two and a half weeks and, we're still here.

Why do people subject themselves to this weather?!?  It was -27 Celsius for most of this week.  Not pleasant.  I spent last night with a large warmed up grain bag on me.

I finally got the okay to fly home.  But, since we're just a couple of days before Passover, I'm sticking around until after the first seder.

Written last week:

I'm back in Ottawa!  I still can't hear well out of one ear.  But, I'm happy to be home and happy that family got to spend a lot of time with E.

We spent the first seder in Winnipeg.  Thankfully, my dad (who usually likes to draw out the seder with "teachable moments") did the expedited version.   We all got a kick out of E finding the Afikoman.

One thing that really helped for our trip was having some homemade preserved apple sauce that I could use in a pinch.  I haven't been married to any one approach to feeding E solid food.  Sometimes I give her purees and sometimes I go with a more baby-led approach.  She loves putting inedible things in her mouth...but isn't much for actually putting the food in her mouth.  She'll usually have a couple of small bites of food and then lose interest.  

But, apple sauce seems to be one of her preferred foods.  

A couple of days before leaving, I made apple sauce out of a three pound bag of Granny Smith apples.

My goal was to freeze a ice cube tray's worth and can the rest.

I kept the ingredients simple -- the peeled and cored apples were boiled with about half a cup of water and a cinnamon stick.

After about 15 minutes on a light boil, it was pretty sauce-like already.  But I blended it with an immersion blender.

I got an ice cube tray

and six 125 ml. jars.

Next I'm going to make some pear sauce.

Below are some of the other purees I've made (carrots, leak and potato soup and squash soup):

Honey Apple Noodle Kugel

I love Kugel .  I don't really care if it's savory or sweet but I must admit that sweet kugels are my favourite. Sweet kugels are generally made with a base of cooked wide noodles and whatever you chose to add to them as a fruit or cheese. I always make kugel around Jewish holiday time and this one was for the Jewish New Year where apples and honey are symbolic of sweet things and the sharing of them are shared wishes for a sweet year ahead. Tradition is a wonderful thing.

You seriously can't  mess this up and with minimal effort you're rewarded with something so comforting and tasty that all you can say is Life is Good.

Ingredients

• 12 ounces wide egg noodles, cooked
• 6 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 (20 ounce) cans apple pie filling
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F and lightly spray your 13 x 9 baking pan with cooking spray.
2. Mix everything together.
3. Bake for 1 hour.
   
   

Hamentaschen

When Jewish holidays come up, my mind automatically goes to the food associated with that holiday.  Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) -- I think apples and honey.  Passover -- I think matza and horseradish and matza brie.  Hannukah -- I think latkas.  Purim - I think hamentaschen.  

I recruited a friend of mine to have a hamentashen-making morning.  It's so much faster when you have two people, one to roll the dough, the other to work with the filling.

Prune Filling

3/4 lb prunes

1/2 lb raisins

1 orange (deseeded, quartered, blended with skin left on)

lemon juice (to taste)

~1/2 cup pureed apricot (I couldn't find any, so I pureed peaches)

This is my friend's recipe.  She blends all of this together and lets it sit in the fridge overnight so that the flavours meld.  I followed a bit of a different plan.  I let the prunes and raisins sit in water overnight to plump up.  Here's what they look like after absorbing water overnight:

  

Then I blended everything together in the morning.  This made for a more liquidy filling, but it was still good.   

Basic Oil Dough

Norene Gilletz 

1 medium-sized seedless orange (thin-skinned)
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 3/4 cups flour (approximately)
2 tsp baking powder

Cut orange in quarters but do not peel. 

Process in a food processor until fine, using the steel blade, about 25 seconds.

Add eggs, sugar and oil. 

Process for 10 seconds. Add flour and baking powder. Process with several on/offs, just until flour is blended into dough. Do not over-process. Dough will be fairly sticky. Remove from bowl with a rubber spatula onto a lightly floured surface. Use as directed. 

Yield: enough dough for 4 dozen Hamentaschen. 


To Assemble:

1. Roll out dough to approximately 1/4 inch.  Make sure to use a good amount of flour so that the dough doesn't stick.

2. Cut circles as close together as possible so as not to have to overwork the dough more than necessary


3. Put 1 tablespoon of filling in centre of circle

4. Bring sides up and together pinching together to form a triangle shape. The cookie doesn't have to be completely closed, but the dough should hold together. It's nice to be able to see the filling - especially if you make several different fillings
5. Place cookies on greased or sprayed cookie sheet or on silpat
6. Brush with a combination of an egg yolk plus 2 tbsp of water (not entirely necessary but gives it a nicer sheen).  Alternatively, you can melt some butter and spread that on top.  


7. Bake in 350 F oven for 25 - 30 minutes

Verdict: I purchased the raisins and prunes at Bulk Barn and made the mistake of assuming that the scales provided measured in pounds.  I realized, at the checkout, that I had more than double what I intended to buy since the scales were actually kilograms.  So, I doubled the recipe for the filling.  To use up all the filling, I tripled the recipe of dough.  Surprisingly enough, it didn't take us that long to make 12 dozen hamentaschen.  Thankfully, they freeze very well, are easy to share with others and taste great!  

Winter Fancy Food Show

Thank you to everyone who participated in our contest last week.  I drew names from a hat...                    

and LeighAnn won!

*****************************************************************
Now, let me tell you about my recent trip to San Francisco....

If you follow me on Twitter, @EqualOppKitchen, you probably saw some of these pictures. While I was in San Francisco, I attended the Fancy Food Show.  The show was massive, with over 1300 exhibitors from more than 35 countries.

The show was a feast for all of the senses.  Common foods were antipasto items, cheese, olive oil, cookies/cakes and various drinks or powders to add to drinks.  But, the selection was remarkable.

Canada was well-represented at the show, with an entire pavilion area devoted to Canadian exhibitors.

Here are some products that I found particularly interesting:

These products come from a Canadian company, La Ferme Martinette.  They have a great selection of maple products that can be ordered online.  We made good use of some of these products for pancake brunch today.

This Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit seems like a really approachable first step to homemade fresh mozzarella cheese.

I wish Kugel Co's sweet kugel were available in Ottawa.  Every now and then I get kugel cravings.  Maybe it's time I bite the bullet and make some of my mom's recipe.

I'm kind of a sucker for interesting syrups.  Blackberry Patch has quite the selection.  I was particularly taken with the Sweet Potato syrup.  Not something I ever expected to see, but apparently it's a versatile syrup.

I was thrilled to get a couple of Tahitian Gold samples.  Vanilla is one of my favourite smells and ingredients.  I've already had some of the vanilla sugar sprinkled on strawberries.  I think I'm going to order a bunch of vanilla to be sent to Giz while she's in Palm Springs because it's quite expensive to buy in the stores here.

I also really like the idea of pairing wine and cookies.  Wine & cheese or wine & chocolate is great, but I think it would be a lot of fun to have a group of girlfriends over to talk about our favourite wine and cookie pairings.

I was also quite taken with these clear packaging options for baked goods.   Makes me want to bake cupcakes and candy apples, just so that I can give them away in cute packaging.   I think they would be great for made-by-hand wedding giveaways.   

I think I'll stop there for now.  But stay tuned for more fancy food posts and travel posts about the rest of our trip!

Honey Cake for Rosh Hashana

Nothing represents Rosh Hashana (New Year) in the Jewish tradition more than honey cake. Each year I follow the tradition by making my mother's honey cake recipe. Each year I tell myself it's a good cake but a little on the dry side. Sorry mom!!

This year I really wanted to find a honey cake that was full of flavour and moist!! I found the perfect balance in Marcy Goldman's Jewish Holiday Baking cookbook.

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup honey
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup warm coffee or strong tea
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1/4 cup rye or whiskey
1/2 cup slivered or sliced almonds (optional)

Fits in three loaf pans, two 9-inch square or round cake pans, one 9 or 10 inch tube or bundt cake pan, or one 9 by 13 inch sheet cake. I made mine in a bundt pan and still had enough for a small loaf pan.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously grease pan(s) with non-stick cooking spray. For tube or angel food pans, line the bottom with lightly greased parchment paper, cut to fit.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Make a well in the center, and add oil, honey, white sugar, brown sugars, eggs, vanilla, coffee or tea, orange juice and rye or whiskey, if using. (If you measure your oil before the honey, it will be easier to get all of the honey out.)

Using a strong wire whisk or in an electric mixer on slow speed, stir together well to make a thick, well-blended batter, making sure that no ingredients are stuck to the bottom.

Spoon batter into prepared pan(s). Sprinkle top of cake(s) evenly with almonds, if using. Place cake pan(s) on two baking sheets, stacked together (this will ensure the cakes bake properly with the bottom baking faster than the cake interior and top).

Bake until cake tests done, that is, it springs back when you gently touch the cake center. For angel and tube cake pans, this will take 60 to 75 minutes, loaf cakes, about 45 to 55 minutes. For sheet style cakes, baking time is 40 to 45 minutes.

Let cake stand fifteen minutes before removing from pan.




Since I'm responsible for all the desserts this year, I decided to include a show stopping apple cake that's always a hit. You can find the recipe HERE



To all who celebrate, a very sweet Shana Tova (Happy New Year)