Beef Brisket Braised in Red Wine, Wrapped in Bacon

I know, I know...why would I cook a Brisket in the middle of a hot New York summer? Well, the only answer I can honestly give is that I wanted to use my new Dutch Oven and I kinda chose the recipe randomly! I live for Padma Lakshmi! This recipe is from her book Tangy Tart

Hot & Sweet. I also didn't really know that Brisket is a fall/winter food until my boss (Lady Boss) told me at work the other day.

As I am typing this the experimental Brisket is cooking in the oven...it smells pretty good and I have flipped it once! So far so good!

The Recipe:

3 Pounds beef Brisket

1 bottle of Chianti or Barolo red wine

6 to 8 bay leaves

12 strips of center cut bacon

2 teaspoons fresh thyme

4 tablespoons butter

1 red onion, cut into 4-6 wedges

4 carrots scraped and cut diagonally into 3 inch pieces

2 fennel bulbs quartered

6 whole celery stalks cut into 4 inch pieces including all leaves and hearts

8 cloves of garlic

Now lets talk about these ingredients for a hot second! What the hell is a fennel bulb??? What's a celery heart??? Well I certainly didn't know the answers to these questions at all! Being the type of boy that isn't afraid to ask questions I found out the follo

wing things:

A fennel bulb looks like this:

From what I gather Fennel has three parts that can be used for cooking...the bulb, the seeds, and the foliage. I only want the bulbs for this recipe so I will focus on that part. I freaked a little when I read I would need it because I had no idea where to look for it. Luckily Lady Boss went to Whole Foods and was kind enough to surprise me with 2 happy shiny bulbs at work the day after she explained what the hell it was! Yay! One ingredient down!

After work on Sunday I decided I would go to Whole Foods myself and buy the rest of the

goods. Ok maybe not by myself, I took my trusty boyfriend with me and gave him the butcher stuff...wait that didn't sound quite right...what I meant to say was he dealt with the butcher.

When we got to Whole Foods at Union Square I kinda wanted to throw up a little bit. It can be very overwhelming if you don't know exactly where everything is! After my first minor freak out I decided to center myself and just buy the stuff on my list. Why on earth is the produce in two different parts of the store? It would have made my shopping experiance a lot more pleasant if I could have picked up the celery, carrots, and the thyme in one section! Just a suggestion Whole Foods guys!

Just as I was starting to really feel like I had my shit together the b

oy friend came up to me with bad news: THERE WAS NO BRISKET!!!! WHAAAAAAT!?!?

I asked if he got the center cut bacon and he said no because he wanted to get them together. I

told him "Fuck the bacon...I will deal with it...run over to Food Emporium and see if they have the brisket! If they don't have it, go across the street from them to Trader Joe's!" He ran off and I went about getting the rest of the stuff!

Finding the stuff was no biggie...I got lovely veggies and even grabbed some plums for a granita

I plan on making today also! Yay! Then I got the call....no Brisket at either of the other stores! WHAT THE HELL???? Well I wasn't going to take no for an answer at this point so I decided I

was going to find this brisket if I had to find the damned cow and cut it myself!

I put a quick text in to Lady Boss and started to head to the big Whole Foods on the corner of

Bowery and Houstan. She told me not to panic and if there really was no brisket to just try to find something that was as close as possible. Luckily I didn't have to do that at all. The big Whole Foods totally had it and I went off on the looooong ass trek back to Bushwick.

Before we move on: Did you know that you shouldn't buy a Chianti unless it has DOC or DOCG

on the label? It stands for "Denominazione di Origine controllata e garantita" . I believe it is the region the wine comes from in Italy. Good to know!

STEP 1: "marinade brisket in wine and bay leaves for 8 to 10 hours in fridge"

The first thing you do is marinade the Brisket in the wine with the bay leaves. Totally easy! I love cooking already! You are supposed to marinade it for 8 to 10 hours. I don't know if you can marinade longer than that and to be honest I didn't want to fuck with Padma's recipe so I timed it so that I could start cooking it around noonish the next day.

STEP 2: " Cook bacon over medium heat in a skillet...don't overcook it--it shouldn't be crispy. Remove bacon and save the fat in the skillet."

I woke up at around 10 am on Monday and started to clean and cut the veggies and such. When I was done I took them put them all in a big bowl and stored them in the fridge.

After that I started to cook the bacon in a skillet. That's when I ran into my first problem. Those little strips of bacon were not gonna wrap around that big ass brisket! HUH!?!? Is this a normal problem? I used my mama's old bacon press to keep them as flat as possible...but they were still really short compared to the brisket. Fuck it. I decided to trust that my instincts would kick in when I had to deal with that and I moved on.

STEP 3: "remove Brisket from wine (save the marinade) and sear it for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on each side...in the bacon fat..."

I made sure to turn the heat up to high and I held the brisket with my tongs while I timed each side at 2 minutes because it was so big. Alright for a run on sentence! I was surprised that the brisket smelled so weird when it came out of the wine....I hope it doesn't smell like that all day. Ugh.

STEP 4: "place seared beef in your dutch oven to let it cool for a few minutes...sprinkle thyme on both sides of brisket...wrap bacon around brisket and secure with kitchen string"

Ok...so now I am faced with the problem. These damned strips of bacon aren't gonna wrap around the brisket. DAAAMN! I decided that I would lay the strips on each side of the brisket and then sort of wrapped the string around so that it looked like a poorly wrapped christmas present. I'm hoping that the whole point is for the bacon to flavor the brisket a bit more. If it is supposed to stay attached to the brisket as an outer layer then I totally fucked up already.

STEP4: "pre heat oven to 300 degrees"

I started preheating my oven waaaay early (back when I was cooking the bacon). I'm glad that I did because my thermometer told me that the oven heat wasn't matching the dial. It turns out my dial may read 300 but the oven only heated up to 250. After a little experimenting I finally got the right temp. Well, as close as I think I was gonna get!

STEP 5: " In the same skillet, melt the butter and saute the veggies in the bacon and brisket fat. for about 4 to 5 minutes to awaken the flavors...pour them (and the remaining fat) into the dutch oven with the brisket then pour the remaining marinade over all"

This was harder than it sounds...I had to do 3 skillets full of veggies before I had them all done. After that was over I did the rest of the step and now was ready for the slow cooking process to begin!

STEP 6: " Bake the Brisket for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Every 30 minutes, remove the brisket and turn it, stirring the veggies...when done, the brisket should be so tender you can cut it with a spoon. Remove the kitchen string and bay leaves, spoon the veggies over the meat and serve."

This is where I am now. I'm going on hour 2 and my only concern is that every time I turn the brisket a piece of bacon tears. I hope this is normal! I will do a post after it is officially done! Wish me luck!

On a fun note:

Did you know you could buy kitties at my local bodega?