Corned beef!

I never knew how good corned beef could be until this happened on my stove.  The process is somewhere between curing bacon and brining a turkey and you will absolutely not regret trying this yourself. But you may regret not trying it. Also, true story; this corned beef is responsible for Brittany getting a job.

Once again, this is a recipe from Charcuterie. One important thing you'll need before you start is a stock pot (or crock pot) big enough to hold a 5 lb beef brisket and space in your fridge to hold it.

For the corning:

1 gallon water

2 cups kosher salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 oz (5 tsp) pink salt (This is a bit of a specialty item.  Here in town I get mine at Meadows on Mississippi.  You can also ask at the counter of a specialty meat market and sometimes they'll have some for sale. This stuff has a lot of different names but the stuff you want almost always ends with a  #1. Pink salts ending in #2 are for things like dry-cured sausage and the like.

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 Tbsp pickling spice (you can find recipes for pickling spice or buy it pre-made at a lot of bulk spice stores, like Sheridan's)

One 5-pound beef brisket

Combine all the brine ingredients in your large pot. Bring to a simmer and stir until the salt and sugar have dissolved. Remove from heat, and once it has cooled to room temperature, refrigerate it until chilled. 

Plop the brisket into your brine and weight it down with a bowl or plate so that it stays submerged and leave it alone for 5 days.

I ended up having to cut my brisket in half to make it fit and as far as I can tell, this was to no ill-effect.

For the cooking:

2 Tbsp pickling spice

1 head cabbage

1 carrot

1 onion (Or 1/2 a Costco onion. Those mothers are huge)

a few potatoes (Yukon golds! Or not, but they're my favorite.)

After 5 days are up, rinse the brisket thoroughly in cool water. Toss the brine.

Throw the brisket and all of your chopped up vegetables back in the stock pot and cover it with enough water to cover everything. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 3 hours or so.  Make sure to check the water level every once in awhile and add water as necessary.

Absolutely delicious.  But really, the main reason I wanted corned beef is this:

 

Mmmm... corned beef hash...

My first attempt at Indian food.

On a recent trip to Costco I reintroduced myself to those wonderful TastyBite heat and eat pouches of Indian food.  If you haven't tried them and enjoy Indian food at all, you should check them out; one pouch holds about two servings (or one if you're hungry) and take 90 seconds to heat up. 

The flavor I ended up with this time around is by far my favorite:  Madras Lentils.  

After about four days of eating the stuff over fried eggs and bagels (so, so good!), and worrying about the financial drain I'd experience trying to support this habit; I decided I'd try my hand at making my own.

Madras is the name given to the general genre of curry spices used to flavor the stuff and though it is a reference to the city in India, the name actually originates in the UK.  Madras curries tend to be a little more on the spicy side and are often reddish in color due to the presence of chilies and tomatoes.  The flavors most common in these curries (according to wikipedia) are salty, sweet, sour, and toasty spices.

Having said that; the stuff I managed to make has very little in common with the store bought "madras lentils" except that it contains lentils and is curried... Still delicious though, and quite easy.  Most of my recipe came from this lady at Food Network.

My recipe went thusly:

2 cups lentils

4 cups water

1 1/4 giant large onion, diced

3 medium tomatoes, diced

5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1 can red beans

2 Tbsp oil

3 Tbsp hot curry powder

 

First step is to rinse the lentils and soak them for about half an hour so that they'll get a little mushy when you cook them.  Then rinse them and put them in a pot with the water.  Add the onion, tomato, garlic, and ginger and bring the mix to a boil.  Once it is boiling, turn the heat down to a simmer and let it roll for 30-40 minutes.  In the end you want the lentils to get a bit mushy, so at around 30 minutes, whisk the mixture to break up some of the lentils and release their nummy starches which will thicken the whole thing up.  Add the red beans now because they pretty much just have to be heated up if you use canned ones.

Next comes the kinda fun part: we get to make bagaar!  This is a fancy Indian way of saying "boil spices in hot oil." At least as far as I can tell... 

Heat up the oil in a small saucepan. Once it is hot, toss in the curry spice (refer to Aarti's recipe, linked above, if you want to mix your own curry spice) and let it foam for no more than 30 seconds and pour it all in the curry.  WATCH OUT! You've just poured hot oil into water, don't burn your face off.  Mix it up and add a bunch of salt to taste. Congratulations!

 

Next time I try this I think I'm going to also add a can of tomato paste to try to get closer to the store-bought stuff, but definitely not bad.  Serve it over brown rice or on it's own or however you like.