1. It was my turn to host family dinner this evening. A few days ago, I inspected what remains of last year's beef purchase and noted the brisket in the freezer. I've never cooked brisket before, but I've read a little about brisket. It's a tough cut of meat. It requires long, slow cooking. I associated brisket with pastrami, corned beef, barbecue, and smoked meat.
I got to thinking -- round steak is a tough cut that requires long cooking to tenderize it. Round steak is commonly used in beef stroganoff --could I, I wondered, braise the brisket and make a stroganoff? I looked into braising brisket and got the idea to create a red wine braise.
That was all I needed to know. The taste buds of my imagination had a conference and all agreed that a red wine based braise would combine very well with sour cream and that this combination would work.
So, this morning, around 6:00, after I'd finished my morning writing, I took the thawed brisket out of the refrigerator, patted it down with paper towels, and seasoned it with pepper, salt, and garlic powder. I heated up some vegetable oil in the Dutch oven and seared the brisket.
I was going to be leaving the house soon and felt better about braising the brisket in the crock pot than the oven while I was away. I placed two or three small chopped onions, a generous amount of chopped celery, some thyme, and four or five cloves of crushed garlic in the bottom of the crock pot, placed the seared brisket on top of them, and poured a bottle of inexpensive red wine over all of it. I put the crock pot on low and figured I'd check into it when I returned home early in the afternoon.
Now, what I hoped for in braising this brisket was that it would be cooked beyond the point of slicing to the point of being able to pull it apart. I would imagine that when brisket is served sliced, it must require some attention to get the brisket tender, but not falling apart. I wanted this brisket to fall apart, so I was unconcerned about overcooking it - as long as it didn't get dry.
When I returned home, the brisket had been slow cooking for about five and half hours or so. I thought -- and I don't know why, except I enjoy braising meat in the oven -- I'll transfer the brisket and the braise back into the Dutch oven and cook it for another couple of hours in the oven at 275 degrees.
So, I did.
I lifted the brisket out of the crock pot, placed it in the Dutch oven, and poured the braise over it.
Hmmm. Too much liquid. So, I scooped out liquid until the brisket was half in, half out of the braise, and put this liquid aside to use as the broth for the stroganoff.
Two hours later, I pulled the brisket out of the oven and it was cooked just the way I wanted it: tender, stringy, and easy to pull apart. I pulled the brisket out, put it on a cutting board (or a pulling apart board) and left the liquid and the onions and celery in the Dutch oven.
I put the stringy, juicy strands of brisket in a bowl and let them cool down.
I got out the other Dutch oven, melted a big chunk of butter, and began cooking the mushrooms I had just sliced. When they were golden, I put a little over two tablespoons of flour over the mushrooms, stirred them around a bit, and browned the flour. I had the broth nearby that I'd scooped out of the crock pot a couple of hours earlier, and poured it over the floured mushrooms until I thought I had it about right. As it started to thicken, I took a slotted spoon and scooped the onion and celery chunks out of the braise and put them in with the mushrooms and broth. I played around with putting more broth in, played around with the thickness of this developing sauce, and then started to further pull apart strands of the cooled brisket and added them in.
I thought the red wine braise sufficiently seasoned the sauce for the time being, but figured later on I might add a little salt and pepper. I let this sauce simmer on the very lowest burner heat for about 90 minutes or so. I took the container of sour cream out of the refrigerator and let it reach room temperature. I added a little more broth in the sauce from time to time. Shortly before Christy, Everett, Paul, and Carol arrived, I folded what I thought was the right amount of sour cream into the sauce, measuring the sour cream by tasting the sauce, not with a cup.
Before I added the sour cream into the stroganoff sauce, I transferred the leftover braise and onions and celery into a bowl -- I will invent and make a soup with this and the leftover stroganoff -- washed the Dutch oven, put water in it, and put almost two heads of cauliflower in the water and steamed them. It an attempt to make this an almost Keto stroganoff, I placed florets of cauliflower in the bottom of five serving bowls and then mashed them up a bit to make my version of cauliflower rice.
Thus, the main dish for dinner was beef stroganoff over a rough version of cauliflower rice.
About forty minutes before dinner, I made a salad comprising chopped Romaine lettuce, basil leaves, chopped Fuji apple pieces, chopped walnuts, cucumber bits, and feta cheese. I decided to dress the salad with one of my recent experiments. I combined olive oil, champagne vinegar, fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt, pepper, and dried oregano in the dressing mixer thing, but I also added the brine from a jar of green olives stuffed with garlic.
Over the past two or three weeks, I have loved this addition of olive brine to vinaigrette. Just for the record, I came up with this idea back in Greenbelt, Maryland when I was making a lot of rice salads for dinner. One day, I thought the brine from the Kalamata olives would taste good in the salad. I was right. In fact, the rice salad I contributed to Carol and Everett's birthday party dinner last Wednesday was partially seasoned with olive brine.
I'm sorry I don't have measurements to offer for making this vinaigrette. I just started pouring and tasting until I thought it tasted pretty good.
(If you are still reading this lengthy description, it's long for two reasons: one, I write this blog mostly so that I have a record of all sorts of things -- including how I fix things in the kitchen; two, during this dinner, Christy asked me if I had made notes as I prepared this meal. These are my notes!)
2. Around 7:30 this morning, I vaulted into the Sube and swung by Ed's place and we jetted down to Worley and spent some time spinning reels at the casino. We had a lot of fun swapping stories and yakkin' about stuff on the way down and back. Things were slow at the casino and I had a relaxing time and didn't spent much money at all. When I had played all I wanted to, I found Ed and I had fun watching him play -- especially when he had some pretty good spins and lit up a couple of machines.
3. That we could enjoy family dinner on the backyard deck this evening made my preparations much easier. I didn't have to declutter the dining table inside or straighten up the living room!
Paul had officiated a wedding yesterday. The bride is the daughter of Amy Arnhold, one of Lee and Ed Holland's daughters. Our family's history with the Hollands stretches back as far as I can remember and we all attended the church across the street at the same time. Christy was very curious about the wedding and the reception (held at Cedar Island up the river) and Carol and Paul added details about the whole shebang to what I gather Christy had already learned from her friend Chris Meyer. I tried to help this conversation along by serving everyone a gin and tonic and by serving the salad and beef stroganoff in separate bowls and bringing them to the table.
Tonight's dinner provided me with further motivation to try to increase my walking/hiking stamina, to continue hiking the trail above the hospital as often as possible. We talked a little bit about when Carol and Paul hiked into Stevens Lake near Mullan five years ago, as well as Ravett Lake. I struggled on the hike into Ravett Lake and I know the Stevens Lake hike is longer, more demanding. I hope I can get myself into good enough shape to one day hike into Stevens Lake.
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