HALF A BEEF BRISKET & TWO PIGS' TROTTERS.

Came home in WW with her yesterday afternoon, for the weather is now cold enough to justify her cooking a large piece of beef and to make a huge stock pot of pork soup. And in the winter, in our house, a large piece of beef will always be brisket!

This cut of beef is solid meat with its' wonderful fat which she cooks in a big casserole with browned onions, lots of minced garlic, seasoning, beef stock with smoked paprika and Worcestershire sauce.

She got it into the oven at 6pm, looked at it at 11pm and decided it needed longer, so it cooked for six and a half hours at gas mark 3. And on top of the stove was a huge stock pot full of pork bones and a pair of chopped up trotters, trotters being the correct name for pigs' feet. They give a pork based vegetable soup a wonderful amount of gelatine and are extremely tasty.

As neither of this items would have been ready for us to eat last night, she reached into the chilly white larder.. aka fridge.. and pulled out a package which Juliano had given her when she left on Saturday night. And, oh joy! LookieLookie, there were eight beautifully stuffed cabbage leaves!

She took four of the cabbage packages, put them into a small saucepan and with a ladle, reached into the stock pot and and took out a generous amount of pork stock, brought the stock up to the boil and simmered the stuffed cabbage leaves for several minutes.

Now many of you will, I am sure, know how to cook brisket but if you don't here's a simple but truly veryvery delicious recipe for you.

First go to your butcher! Do not go to a supermarket for brisket, they'll have trimmed off most of the fat and if you're slow cooking beef for several hours, you need all of that fat!

And there's absolutely no point in buying just a little bit of this glorious meat! Because it takes a long time to cook, you might as well cook a large amount and freeze a lot of it or share the meat with friends.

So off she and WW went down to the North End Road. Her butcher pulled out a whole brisket and asked her how much she wanted, she drew a line across it and said " I want this piece with the fat" and he smiled at her and said "how many hours and what with?". 

"Ah", she said " you know me, I do it the way Mary taught me and it's so good, why would I ever do it another way, she was a brilliant cook, wasn't she?" and they smiled at each other.

This is a dish which is much much better cooked a day or two ahead of when you want to eat it. Cook it one evening, let the casserole sit in the oven with the heat turned off for the night, in the morning take the fat off and let the dish sit in the coolest place possible.

So this is what you need and how you cook it..

You need a good amount of brisket from a proper butcher with the fat.
3 good sized onions.
We use almost a whole head of garlic.
2 Tbsp of Olive oil.
Freshly ground Pepper and salt.
1 Dessert spoonful of Smoked Paprika.
1Tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce.
2 cups of (preferably home made) beef stock.
3 large carrots sliced not too thinly.
2 skinny but not too big parsnips sliced not too thinly.

You will need:
A large frying pan.
A smaller frying pan.
A casserole large enough to take the brisket.

**The lid of the casserole has to be a good fit, if it isn't, when you're ready to cook, put a layer of tin foil over the top of the casserole, crunch it down around the sides and then place the lid on, you want all the moisture to remain inside the pot!

Preheat your oven to gas mark 3 or the equivalent in electric.

Take the brisket and rub it allover with a mix of crushed and chopped garlic (4 or 5 fat cloves), freshly ground salt and black pepper and smoked paprika. Let the meat sit for at least 30 minutes.

Gently fry the sliced onions and 3 crushed & chopped cloves of garlic in 2 tbs of olive oil until they are brown but not burnt.

In a big skillet / frying pan (WITHOUT any oil) which you've previously heated up, place the meat, then turn it and brown it on all sides.

Mix the stock & Worcestershire sauce together.

Put the meat FAT side up into your casserole. Pour in the beef stock mix, put the carrots and parsnips around the meat and then place the browned onions and garlic on top of meat.

**Please read this about keeping the moisture inside the casserole!

Set your timer for 5 hours.

The piece she cooked last night was very large, it cooked for six and a half hours. The casserole was much too large to go into the chilly white larder, so she just turned the heat off, left the oven door open and went to bed. This morning it looks like a dream! The fat has become solid, this afternoon, she'll skim it off, melt it down, pour it into an old glass jar to keep and use as dripping.

About half of the meat will be portioned up and frozen, the remaining half will be split into two, half for us and the remaining half we'll up the road to our Lebanese friends for a supper on Thursday and we'll eat it with a crisp salad of endive and radicchio served with a lemon dressing and it will be truly delicious.

Now, off you go to talk to your butcher..

GeeGee Parrot.
November 14th, 2017.