The Humble Kitchen

I had a brisket I’d picked up at the farmer’s market kicking around and I decided to give pastrami a try. Last year around this time I attempted to do a corned beef, and it was far too salty to be enjoyable. I wanted to try again but this time use a more trusted source for the recipe. Everything I have made from the book Charcuterie has been amazing, so I started there. This is for a brisket just over 2 lbs.

For the brine:

2 quarts water

¾ cup kosher salt

½ cup sugar

½ tbls pickling spice

¼ cup packed brown sugar

⅛ cup honey

Combine all the brine ingredients in a saucepan and heat gently until the salt and sugar are dissolved. Let cool to room temperature, then chill in a container large enough to fit the brisket. Once cold, place brisket in the brine, placing a plate on top to keep the meat fully submerged. Refrigerate for 3 days. Remove beef from brine and pat dry. Lightly toast and coarsely grind ½ tbls each coriander seed and black pepper corns. Rub onto brisket. Now it’s time to smoke the meat. I lit up a chimney full of charcoal while a few handfuls of wood chips soaked in water. Once the charcoal was glowing I placed it along one side of my lidded grill, and placed the drained chips on top of the glowing coals. The brisket goes on the cool side of the grill, lid on. The smokey fire lasts about half an hour, and I only wanted the pastrami lightly smoked, so I stopped there. You could certainly have another chimney of charcoal ready to go, and more soaked chips, and smoke it further. Once it’s as smokey as you’d like, place the brisket in an inch of water in an appropriately sized oven safe pan. Cover with foil and bake in a preheated 275º oven for about an hour and a half, or until it is fork-tender. We sliced it thin against the grain, served it on dark bread with hot mustard, emmenthaler and sauerkraut.

-Jennifer

Now that my daughter is older, and my Grandparents are no longer with us, I notice our Christmas traditions evolving. We still open presents on Christmas Eve, we still pop open Christmas crackers and wear paper crowns. But this year, my now teenage daughter jokingly suggested on Christmas Eve we should eat sushi, watch Silence Of The Lambs, then open presents to make us feel better. I though why not, sounds like fun. So that is exactly what we did, and it was fun. A new family tradition? We’ll have to wait and see.

Christmas always makes me nostalgic. When we were kids we lived next door to my mom’s parents. They were from Arkansas and Oklahoma, and though my mom couldn’t wait to leave Oklahoma and move to California, she still mentions the thunder storms, her own grandmother’s cooking, and other childhood memories. I suppose I’d like to keep some family traditions alive, so occasionally I will make something like chicken and dumplings for dinner, and ask my mom is it’s anything like her grandmother’s.

So on Christmas Day I indulged these nostalgic feelings, and made fried chicken. I had luckily found a copy of Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc At Home, (which is sold out until February!) and one of the first recipes in it is fried chicken. This recipe is a process, but well worth it. First there’s a twelve hour brine. Lemons, thyme, parsley, honey, bay leaves, pepper corns, garlic, I tell you the smell of the brine alone was glorious. I wanted to dab it behind my ears.

There’s no way the chicken and brine was going to fit in my fridge, so I used Alton Brown’s trick of making the brine with half the water, then once it was cool I added the remaining water in the form of ice, which kept the whole thing nice and cold in an ice chest overnight.

After twelve hours the chicken pieces are rinsed and left at room temperature for an hour and a half. I dredged in well seasoned flour, dipped in buttermilk, dredged again. The instructions are very specific about oil temperature and timing. This chicken is delicious. Hands down the best I’ve ever made or eaten. I cannot wait to try another recipe from this book.

On the side I made some simple mashed potatoes with buttermilk, and collard greens. My dear friend Jean had made these collards for me recently, and I can’t get enough of them. Saute onion and the chopped stems of the collards in olive oil until soft. Throw in heaps of minced garlic then add the chopped collards & a handful of chopped dried cranberries. Once the greens are cooked to your liking add seasoning and a tablespoon or so of soy sauce. The soy sauce really makes the dish. Delicious and beautiful.

For dessert, a family recipe, brownie pie. This is really a pecan pie, but we’ve always called it brownie pie. It’s good no matter what you call it. It’s a basic recipe, but in comparing it to other recipes I think ours is less sweet. For the pie crust I used the new ipod app Ratio . Don’t get me started on the wonders of this app. I took Michael Ruhlman’s advice & added an egg and some chopped pecans to the dough. You can use whatever pie crust you prefer.

2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 eggs, well beaten
½ cup sugar
¾ cup dark corn syrup
1 cup chopped pecans, more for decorating top if desired
1 unbaked pie crust

Melt chocolate and butter together. Mix sugar and corn syrup with beaten eggs, then blend in chocolate and butter mixture. Add pecans and a pinch of salt. Pour this into an unbaked pie crust. Bake at 300º for 40-50 minutes. Pie is done when a toothpick poked into the middle comes out clean, and there’s no more wobble. A dollop of whipped cream is an unnecessary but welcome addition. Simple and a pleasure to eat.

-Jennifer