Happy Jew Year!

For those reading for the first time, let's play a little catch up.  I catered a small gathering a few weeks ago, and my friend Wendy strongly urged me to make a caveman brisket for the Rosh Hashana holiday (brisket being the traditional meal), also known as the Jewish New Year.  But I was only going to do it if I didn't get an invite to friends' or family's for the holiday meal.  Well, as the days approached, it looked like an invitation wasn't coming (not surprising, I'm not very lovable, and probably talk with food in my mouth too much, spitting it across the room like a sprinkler head like my Grandmother used to), so I went to Whole Foods and bought a grass fed brisket.

But wouldn't you know it, turns out I'm loved after all (aw shucks), especially by my friends Jessica & Pash.  They invited me over and the food was delicious!  Pash's mom made these incredible side dishes and salad, which I will definitely feature in a future blog, and Jessica's mom made an amazing brisket!  I picked her brain about how to cook it and turns out she mixed ketchup with apricots, along with spices and covered the brisket, cooking it over potatoes (yes, I cheated and had a potato, so sue me) for 3 hours.  It inspired me not to keep my grass fed brisket in the freezer until Passover, and make that sucker this weekend.

My sister gave me a recipe, but my friend Shari's recipe intrigued me, because her sauce was a combo of ketchup and grape jelly!  That may sound like an odd combination to you, but a friend used to mix ketchup and grape jelly and bake chicken in it, calling it Hawaiian Chicken, and it was fabulous.  So I decided to make Shari's recipe.

I also looked up a bunch of recipes on-line, and all the traditional Jewish recipes called for the same things, Lipton Onion Soup Mix, and Heinz Ketchup.  Shari's and my sister's recipes also called for these.  Okay, maybe our Jewish grandmothers weren't the most creative cooks once they came to America, but in the age of "Mad Men," it proves advertising worked on immigrants!  Obviously I can't use Heinz ketchup, but if you're a regular reader, you know I solved the ketchup problem early on in my caveman dieting.  I think my homemade ketchup gets better every time I make it.  I substitute honey for sugar, and lemon juice for vinegar, and it tastes so thick and tomatoey (new word?), and FRESH!  I had a huge batch left over from my Labor Day weekend at the cabin, so that was one less thing I had to cook.

Then I looked up the ingredients in Lipton Onion Soup Mix: Dehydrated Onions, Salt, Cornstarch, Onion Powder, Sugar, Corn Syrup, Hydrolyzed Soy Protien, Caramel Color, Partially Hydrogentated Soybean Oil, Monosodium Glutamate, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavors, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate.

Yummy!  I've been craving Disodium Guanylate since I went caveman!!!!  Just like Grandma used to make.  We'd come home from school, and there'd be a fresh batch of Disodium Guanylate waiting for us, right out of the oven!

We've all eaten so many chemicals for so long, and we don't need to, folks.  The choice comes down to convenience over health.  I'm choosing health.  My buddy, who looks as healthy as a horse, just informed me he used to have Hodgkins Disease.  He was convinced it was from all the pesticides used in commercial farming, and he's been eating organically (and has remained healthy) ever since.  I believe him.  Okay, enough preaching, let's make this Lipton's Chemical Soup Mix into a healthy alternative.

Organically speaking, there's plenty of Dehydrated Onions and Onion Powder out there, so that was easy.  No corn starch, but I do have arrowroot, which is a thickener as well, and not made from grain like corn (no grains at all on the caveman diet).  Obviously no salt, one of the major no-no's in Caveman Cooking, so I added some dry spices to make up for the taste lost due to the lack of salt: black pepper, garlic powder, thyme, and sage.  Forget the sugar, the sauce will be sweet enough.  All the other Lipton ingredients can be tossed out the window, I wouldn't know what Hydrolyzed Soy Protein tastes like, let alone try to recreate it in a healthy way.  But my guess... tastes a little like chicken.

I didn't bother looking up the ingredients in Welch's grape jelly.  I have all the info I need in the name.  I had some fantastic organic California Red Seedless grapes, that I threw in the blender.  I added the ketchup (saving some for leftover brisket sandwiches later in the week), and blended them together with 2 cloves of garlic into a sauce.

Since I can't use potatoes, I just cut up a bunch of root veggies into large chunks instead.  Carrots, celery, rutabaga, turnips, parsnip, and something new to me, celery root (all ingredients, all organic, all the time).  Celery root is an ugly mother of a veggie, but once you peel away the outer skin, it tastes a little like a watery potato.  Not sure this is the best way to cook it yet, but still, mixed in with the others, it was delicious, and the potato wasn't missed at all!!  The veggies had the same texture, taste, and feel of  potatoes, without all the bad things potatoes bring to your body, like toxins and saddle bags on your thighs.  Eat as many of these root veggies you like, you will not gain weight!  And if they're organic, you will never get sick from them either.

Okay, I put my root veggies in a deep casserole dish, and drizzled some olive oil, giving them a toss, so they wouldn't stick to the bottom or to each other.  I then layered some red onion slices on top.  Then I took out my grass fed brisket, and browned each side in a cast iron skillet.  Once it was browned, I rubbed the Caveman Onion Soup Mix into the warm brisket.  Then I laid it on the red onions and veggies, fat side down, poured the Caveman Ketchup/Grape Sauce over it, turned it over, and poured the rest on top of the fat side.  I like cooking things with the fat side up, so it drips down into the meat while it cooks.  Fat IS flavor!  Remember, not all fat is your enemy, and when it's grass fed, or wild, the fat is rich with Omega-3, which is one of the healthiest things on earth.  It's the fat from farm animals being fed corn and soy that makes them so unhealthy, so keep it organic and eat all the fat you want!

I covered it tight with aluminum foil and baked it at 350 degrees.  Supposedly it takes an hour a pound, but with all the questions I asked, and all the recipes I looked up, I couldn't get a definitive time for cooking brisket.  So Shari helped me while I cooked it, telling me when to check it.  I figured since it was a relatively small brisket (after all, I'm only cooking for one), at 2.27 pounds, I could get away with 2 and a half hours of cooking time.  Shari told me to check on it at 2 hours, and stick a fork into the end. If the meat breaks away easily, it's done.  If not, turn it over, cover it back up and keep cooking.  I stuck a fork into the end, and panicked because it didn't fall away.  In fact, it seemed pretty tough.  Uh-oh, could be a disaster.  Another disaster for the Jews.  But maybe they'll make a holiday out of it one day.  Pretty much every Jewish holiday is the same anyway, "They tried to kill us, they didn't, let's eat."  In this case, "us" would be the brisket I was slowly killing at 350 degrees.  But back into the oven it went, praying for a miracle.

Left it in for another hour, and behold at the 3 hour mark, the tip fell off just like Shari said it would.  I guess no matter how big or small the brisket is, it still needs 3 hours to break down all the fat.  I let it settle for a few minutes, and it sliced just like it does on TV (or when a real cook makes it)!  The brisket was tender, juicy, and delicious!  It smelled amazing too!  The grass fed beef was definitely leaner than any other brisket I've ever had before, but it was still seasoned well, and juicy.  The sauce was amazing, maybe even too sweet for my taste, but still great.  Maybe next time I'll use less grapes.  The veggies were outstanding, and made me think I can make mock mashed potatoes one day roasting a similar combo of root veggies.  The meat soaked up all the flavor from the red onion and the veggies, and the veggies sopped up the flavor from the meat, all complimented by the sauce.  Take a look for yourself:

Man, I feel so wonderfully Jewy right now!  Like Super Jew!  Able to leap tall cabinets in a single bound!  Able to balance a check book without a calculator!  Able to graduate medical school in only three years!  I made a brisket using no salt, using only organic ingredients, and all the fat was healthy!!  My grandmother would've had me committed if I told her that was possible 35 years ago.  Funny, the more technology we have, the more I want to resort back to the caveman days.  Next time you make a brisket, maybe give this a try and save your family's health.  They can always add salt later from a shaker if they want, but at least it'll be mostly healthy.  And delicious!!!  Maybe make it for Passover.  You might even hear from the open door, "Mmm, Elijah like Caveman Brisket!!  Ugga-Bugga!!!" (Sorry, a little inside Jewish humor for you gentiles).

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