Brisketing

Woke up at 7 to the normal business of 2 kids and a wife, and was relieved to find that I felt much better than when I got to bed -- 9 hours of (semi)uninterrupted sleep does well to nip impending illness in the bed. Shoulders still sore, probably from my attempted pull ups -- looking forward to attempting again tomorrow.

A prominent blog asked me for a brisket knish recipe, and while I have a few in my library and some ideas in my head, haven't made one yet, so I spent the day getting that together. Fun working with stuff like tripe, which I haven't touched since c-school.


TODAY'S COOKING
Brisket Knishes: In the morning, diced 6 lbs of onions and set them to slow caramelize in the oven. Boiled a few potatoes to make a batch of dough. Went to the Essex St market with Mil strapped on to pick up some brisket & tripe. 2 lbs of brisket went into the caste iron pot with beef stock, a head of crushed garlic, a dash of Worcestershire, salt, a dash of brown sugar, smoked paprika and coriander, baked at 300 for 3 hours. Once rested, chopped up and ground with the tripe (which was boiled in water for 2 hours.) Mixed with some simply prepped kasha, caramelized onions, ground pepper, more salt & eggs, then rolled into knish shape and baked.

Funny thing about the tripe -- after boiling for two hours, looked and felt exactly the same as in it's uncooked state.


Banana Bread: Spontaneously baked off two banana breads in the evening when B complained noted that we had a bunch of bananas going bad. So I looked up a simple recipe on line, to which I was missing most of the recipe, so I just went by ratios and substituted like crazy -- shortening for butter, yogurt for sour cream, whole wheat flour for white, brown sugar for white, etc.

Dry: 4 cups whole wheat flour, tbsp baking soda, tbsp baking powder, tsp salt. Wet: 2 2/3 cups sugar (half brown, half white) creamed into 1/2 cup shortening, 2 cups B's diet yogurt, 4 eggs, 6 bananas, tbsp vanilla extract, a few shakes of cinnamon. Baked at 350 for 45 minutes.



AM SNACK: 7:30am, iced green tea
Flipping around TV, watched some Cooking Channel, saw a bit comparing level of caffeine in different drinks. 8oz of plain coffee is about 80 mg of caffeine, while a 1oz shot of espresso is 50mg. 8oz of green tea is about 30, so being that I drink pints, I've been getting less than a cup of coffee but more than a shot of espresso. Hmmmm.


BREAKFAST: 9am, banana


AM SNACK: 11:30am, granola with organic dead milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, brisket on wholewheat, health salad, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
I don't particularly like brisket, especially when someone without skills make it -- usually it comes out tough, stringy and tasting like barfed tomatoes. However, I actually enjoyed this brisket -- after letting it rest, I sliced it thin against the grain and dunked it in the braising liquid before mounting it on bread. It was tender, tasted sharply beefy in the right way, garlicky-sweet-smokey-briney, pleasant. Too bad I had to grind up the balance of the meat to make knishes!

PM SNACK: 7pm, freshly baked banana bread, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5


DINNER: 8:30pm, chicken nuggets, pickle, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Felt run down, wanted something quick. Was gonna make mac n' cheese from a box, but no butter, and shortening probably would have made it nast-ay.