All over but the crying

It's over. The Brisket, now officially a corned beef, and I, have met one another on a stove top and it has gone from brisket to corned beef in a seemingly endless process. I cooked it off today in a three hour run for the roses. When I finally arrived at the corned beef now more than a week in the making, it was anti-climactic.

First, you do need the Instacure No. 1, whatever that is, it should not be optional because the meat is definitely a pinky shade of grey. Secondly, though the brine was rinsed with vigor it is a salty end result. Finally, it's good, but I wanted it to be so much better than what could be bought commercially. And, I wanted it to be the sandwich on the cover of the magazine that sent me spinning for a pink meat reminiscent of New York's best Jewish deli's. We are a brined meat town. Everyone has a taste for this treatment and cut. You can feel it as you are reading, third tooth from the back remembers this meal far too well. It needed to light my world on fire. It just barely woke me from a nap I didn't know I was taking. Suckered in again.

There is something left to tell you however, about brisket come corned beef or anything else:
The way it is cut is everything and it can change a passable thing to a great thing. This hunk of mediocrity, by virtue of its birth, has one last chance at a big finish. Tomorrow, I will see John and we'll look at this thing together, put it on a commercial slicer and see what it has to give.
Corned beef, your moment of greatness awaits.

On another front, they are once again up to the same kitchen antics at Restaurant 121, where I was last night before pastry class: If you ever run an upscale restaurant in a cultured burb: Don't put Smukers jam on the plate with pate and call it "raspberry puree". Even if, Smuckers techincally is a puree, it is one we know by heart because before you threw it on the plate with my pate, it had another, more committed partner: Skippy peanut butter, which my parents made for with me with Raspberry Puree, you know, back when we called it jelly.

Tasty photographs

It is always an irresistible food photo that pulls me in and makes me do what I do. This time, it was the cover shot of Bon Appetit March, 2008 the Corned Beef and Fontina Sandwich. I could have gone to the store and bought some thinly sliced corned beef, the fruit of someone else's patience. I could have gone over to the Early Bird in Ridgefield where their chef has an exacting sandwich standard ( I mean it, you have never had a pastrami on toasted rye with swiss like this, Superman, but you won't worry your silly little self over kryptonite anymore). But no, I had to make the corned beef myself.

It began, as so many things around here do, with a preposterous hunt for an ingredient which is apparently "optional" but keeps the meat pink throughout the brining process, the elusive Instacure No. 1. And so, I was referred to sausagemaker.com... who will sell me 1.5 pounds or 5 pounds, but I need 1 1/2 tablespoons. Have I mentioned I hate being set up for waste? Anyhow, I decided to see how bad it could really be, because I am a little Irish and my Grandmother never stood me on a chair next to her and said, "Now, baby girl, pass me the Instacure No. 1". So, now, clearly already off the beaten path, anything can happen....

I placed it into the brine yesterday. Yes, Josh, I used Guiness. And there it sits, weighted down in my fridge, where it will sit for four days until I can turn it, and weigh it down for another four days. Then, eventually,you cook this mighty six pound side of American flesh for, well, for nearly forever. And, since I have so much time on my hands with this now, I may as well figure out how to make the Fontina, and I have some Rye Flour around here somewhere... nothing but time, now, nothing but waiting. And hunger.

It leaves me wonder how I will get the meat sliced as thinly as I will want it when it is finally, finally done.
I am mulling over wandering down to Kingsley's Deli here in our fair North Salem, invoking ol' Ward's name and begging John to slice it up for me. I have some time to formulate a scheme where that is concerned now, though, don't I?

I wish this were the last time a food photo would lead me down this snarly, hungry path to a sandwich so photogenic but lengthy in process, but I am a sucker every time for the food magazine's talents. Except Gourmet, sadly, their pictures have begun to look so dark, gloomy, and forboding, I sometimes associate the food in question with a last meal. I don't want it to be my last, I love food, and food photos.