I've never made brisket before, and I accidentally got a pot roast. But in my opinion, brisket and pot roast taste exactly alike, so it was fine. I started by popping the meat into the crock pot at 7am with some broth, carrots, potatoes, garlic, and onion, and then I topped the meat with a ketchup-based glaze (which I've seen on my mother in-law's brisket, otherwise I wouldn't have done it). I turned it on low, and then proceeded to fuggidaboutit.
Closer to dinner time, I mixed up some Manischewitz brand matzo balls as per the instructions on the box, and got the soup rolling. I added carrots and celery to the broth so that we could get some vegetables with our meal.
Once that was on, it was latke time. I've only really made latkes for huge groups of people, so I added too much onion to mine. Dan claimed not to mind, but I was cranky about it. Here's how I make them (with a corrected amount of onion!)
Latkes
serves 3-4
Ingredients:
3 potatoes
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 large egg
1 Tbsp flour (or matzo meal)
salt & pepper to taste
Oil for frying
1. Peel the potatoes and grate them into a bowl of cold water (this will slow the oxidation...if you skip the cold water, they will quickly turn black.) You can leave them in the water for maybe an hour, but you really have to work pretty quickly with latkes.
2. When you're ready to fry them, drain the water and then ring out the potatoes (the drier the better. You can even ring them out in paper towels if you have some handy). Put them in a bowl, and then add the remaining ingredients (except for the oil) and mix well.
3. Pour enough oil in the pain so that it's about 1/4 inch deep. Heat this on medium-high until a drop of water flicked into the pan sizzles. Scoop up about 1/4 cup of the latke mixture (I use a slotted spoon to eliminate any residual moisture) and place it in the pan. You can fry as many as will comfortably fit.
4. Cook for a minute or two, checking for brownness, and then flip over until the other side is cooked. I put the cooked latkes on a baking sheet topped with a cooling rack in the oven, which I set at 150˚ to keep them warm.
Serve with sour cream and/or applesauce.
I pulled the meat out of the crock-pot:
And it shredded beautifully. Unfortunately, it was a little dry (look at how much liquid is in that pot? How was that possible? I guess I really have no clue how to cook red meat!), but thankfully there was enough juice to dip it in to make it tasty. Here's the spread:
With the meat a little dry and the latkes a little too oniony, the best part of the meal was the matzo ball soup from a box! Sheesh! It was okay, though, because overall it was yummy and I got my fix. Now I will be good until Passover.
Oh, and of course no Jewish feast would be complete without some Dr. Brown's soda:
Which you can buy in the Jewish food section of Price Chopper.
In other news, I'm itching to go on a run. I haven't been on a run in a long time because things keep getting in the way, like snow, seriously frigid temperatures, or time constraints, or like yesterday when I had a killer headache that started Monday night and had me down for the count. Thankfully, I got a ton of school work knocked out before I gave up and laid on the couch with a cold washcloth over my eyes and popped a million pills to try to make it go away. I have been doing other things, such as long walks, Jillian Michaels workouts, and Richard Simmons, so I have still been exercising every day, but I really want to listen to my audiobooks that I'm only allowed to listen to when I run. Today I have no headache, there is no snow, it is reasonable warm outside, and I don't have to leave for class until 3:30, so I think today is my day.
No comments:
Post a Comment