Braised Brisket with Mushrooms

I've been craving brisket for weeks now. I keep saying as soon as a weekend with no rain presents itself I'm going to smoke a brisket. While I could do a brisket in the rain, I just didn't feel like it. A couple of months ago the Cook's Country magazine came out with a recipe for a braised brisket with mushrooms. This was the weekend.

Like most Cook's Country recipes it uses about every dish in the kitchen and some of them twice. It's a dish that takes a long time to prepare; about an hour to get the ingredients prepped and then 4 1/2 hours in the oven followed by an hour of cooling. My copy of the recipe can be found here.

Carla's brother Glenn just got a job in Alexandria, VA so he'll be moving in a week. His wife Carolyn will follow in July after her daughter Stella graduates from U of O. We used the occasion to have a little celebration. Carla's sister Starr brought mashed potatoes; her other sister Linda and my nephew Paul brought salad and asparagus. (It's my birth week so I didn't have to eat asparagus!)

My recipe program, Mac Gourmet, has an attribute called "difficulty". It's hard to determine what "hard" means in this case. It's not real exacting, but it takes a lot of time and there are many steps. I think making candy or baking would be much more difficult because the temperature controls are so demanding. If you've got some time and willingness to clean dishes this is vey doable.

Start off with ingredients shown below + 1 cup of chicken broth which I was defrosting. I picked up a 5 1/2 pound brisket at New Season's market yesterday and trimmed it down to about 1/4" fat on the fat side. Then poked a lot of holes in it with a fork,  seasoned with salt and pepper and cut it in half

A beautiful brisket and the supporting cast

My buddy John has a niece and nephew-in-law who own The Portland Bottle Shop in Sellwood. After our burger project yesterday we dropped in. I told Travis I needed a "dry red wine" for my recipe. Most all the wine I've ever had has been wet and I needed some guidance. I learned that "dry"is the opposite of "sweet". In dry wines, the fermenting eats up more of the sugars. The wine was very full bodied.
We went there a few weeks ago for a tasting and picked up a case of wines which we are enjoying. It's a great place to head if you are shopping for wine.

I brown a lot of chicken before braising, the brisket was a whole different task. I should have gotten a picture of the fat side which is busy cooking away down there.

Sear the brisket for about 7 minutes on each side. Look at the greas splatter

1/2 of the brisket is browned; the other is in the skillet

The ingredients in approximate order of addition

Next we brown the quartered mushrooms for about 8 minutes until the moisture cooks out and they get nice golden brown

Mushrooms cooking in 1 Tablespoon of the brisket fat

Next, we add the chopped onion and a bit of brown sugar; cook for another 8 or so minutes

 I went back and forth on which skillet to use. I have a humongous one that I considered using. It was going to be a close fit. Can't switch once we've started because we want that luscious fond in the bottom of the pan. We had chicken stock a cup of dry wine and 1/2 cup of the mushroom stock we made by steaming some dried porcini mushrooms in some water.

The wet ingredients go on to make the sauce. It's going to get messier before it gets cleaner

Again, I didn't know which pan to use for the braise. I think it's best to use the smallest pan you can. Compare with the picture above and you'll see that I moved to a smaller 13 x 9" pyrex pan.

Mushroom sauce over the brisket, then into a 300* oven for 4 1/2 hours.

 Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil and in a few hours you get this. Don't worry about all that fat, we'll separate it out and keep a nice silky sauce.

Out of the oven

 Strain the sauce, separate the fat, and put the mushrooms in a separate bowl. Like I said, Cook's Country recipes have a lot of steps. Put things together, cook, separate, recombine, serve.

Glenn, the guest of honor arrived. 

Carla's brother Glenn.

I'm always tickled with Linda and Paul come over; they are such fans of my cooking. You can see the other things people brought. The mashed potatoes are coming in from the kitchen. 

Linda and Paul

Dinner is served

Delicious.

We had a great time; went through about 3 bottles of wine!

The BURGER Project - Mike's Drive-In

February 18 , 2012

For our fourth outing we picked up a fourth member. Norm Gunning is now one of the BURGER group! We are picking up steam; we are expecting to get a grant for our future work. More on that later


Carla, Jeff, and I lived in Milwaukie back in the 80's and one of our favorite hamburger places was Mike's Drive-In on the corner of Highway 224 and Harrison Blvd. It was tiny, but good. Since then they've expanded to another site in Sellwood on the corner of 17th and SE Tenino in a place that used to be an A&W (as you can tell by the architecture).

On a side note. Friday night we went to look at Henriët's wedding gown before they shipped it her in Chicago. My job was to take some pictures. The first shot showed the gown as ivory rather than white. I've been studying how to use my Canon PowerShot S100 and new that I needed to adjust the White Balance to tungsten lighting. The following pictures were great. I forgot that setting and took the picture below with the white balance still set to tungsten; the picture came out very blue. Thank goodness for post processing. I was able to use Aperture to change the WB to account for the overcast outdoor lighting. (Update 1/20/13: I re-edited the file with Adobe Photoshop Elements 11, changing the color cast. I think this is a slightly better picture)

Norm, John, and Jay. The parking lot was full; we were lucky to find a space.

The Oregonian A&E rated Mike's as the 4th best in their top 10. I think we disagree a bit
We pretty all ordered pretty much the same thing. John and I especially seem to have matching tastes.

The shakes arrived. I love these pictures of John; he is always pondering the why's and wherefores.

 The milkshakes were everyone's favorite part of the meal. Even though they were soft serve ice cream they were very rich and tasty. They told us they use Darigold softwserve

Jay performs a thicnkness drip test.

 The burgers looked great. When I ordered my bacon cheese I upgraded from regular bacon to applewood smoked bacon. Unfortunately the bacon wasn't crisp enough. The patties were a bit small and dry and none of us were fans of the shredded lettuce.

One nice option they had was Dave's Killer Bread buns. Jay opted for this; it was a bit dry; not as soft as the classic sesame seed bun

A yummy looking burger basket

 Likewise the french fries looked great. I especially like the thinner cut. But they weren't hot and weren't salty enough (hey this isn't a health food expedition()

Norm considers the fries

 We had fun; it was a good meal. Better than Skyline certainly but not up to the Dea's In & Out.
I'm learning how to embed my Google Docs spreadsheet into the blog. Here is our pivot sheet.

The waitress took our photo when lunch was done

I've been working on embedding information from the Google Docs spreadsheet into the blog post. Not the easiest thing in the world. Hopefully with a little practice it will make more sense. For now I'm only embedding the ratings; the comments are images.

Comments

Ratings

El Cid Chili

Whenever there is a pot luck at work or someone wants a surefire recipe for something, I mention El Cid Chili. It was an award winning Sunset Magazine chili winner many years ago and is still a winner. Someone asked for the recipe recently and I thought I'd try to embed my recipe in a blog post. I've been wanting to learn how to embed something so here we go

I can't find any pictures of me making this dish; guess I'd better make it again :)

El Cid Chili




If you want the PDF, click here.

Camera Testing

I spent some time on my day off last Friday taking shots with my Nikon D50 and Canon S100 to do a bunch of testing.

• Compare the cameras 
• Compare RAW and JPEG formats for the same picture
• Compare features of Picasa, iPhoto, and Aperture for adjusting images

I've never used RAW format before but both cameras allow storing two versions of a picture: RAW and JPEG. I'd heard that RAW format is a truer picture in that the camera doesn't perform a bunch of compression. It's hard to show the comparison on the blog because the RAW formatted picture is converted to JPEG in order to be displayed. The RAW image picks up a lot more color nuance; it will be interesting to see if you can tell the difference here. Both images are from the same activation: 2 versions got created.

RAW Image (but compressed for display on the blog)

JPEG version from the same photo snap

No post processing on either image; maybe it's my imagination but the RAW image just seems a little deeper. Click on the first image above to get a closer view; then arrow to the next version; notice the difference in the blue squiggles on the body of the rooster. The RAW is definitely closer to real life.

Hmm; maybe it's the compression formula on the Canon S100. Let's do the same review from the Nikon D50

Nikon RAW

Nikon JPEG

That's enough evidence for me. I'm going to be shooting RAW from now on unless my SD card is running out of space or something.

As far as the pictures go; both cameras took good pictures. The Nikon allowed me to get a shallower depth of field. Could be I don't know how to get the f-stop adjustments right on the Canon yet.

Then loaded the photos into Picasa, Aperture, and iPhoto to see how they worked. Picasa failed on the RAW images; it tried to load them but they ended up with a pink or purple cast on everything. I ended up liking Aperture a little better because I like how it displays the photo metadata (f stop; aperture; white balance, etc). iPhoto may be a little easier to work with but I think that is because Aperture has more features. In aperture I can magnify an image 1600 times and do pixel-by-pixel adjustments.

Here we have an original and then an adjustment after I cropped it and applied various enhancements.

Looks like I don't have to be a good photographer; I just have to learn to process the pictures after the fact.

Update: March 4, 2012
I sold my Nikon D50 and purchased a Sony Alpha A55. Here is another RAW image of the same critter with the new camera. FWIW this one is closest to its real color.

Sony A55 RAW

Sony A55 JPEG

Halfway to Spring

Took some pictures of the beautiful fall colors around Halloween when we were halfway to winter. Here it is just after Groundhog's Day which means we are  halfway to spring!
On February 4 I went out with my Canon S100 to take some pictures; then on February 5 I went out about the same time of day with the Nikon D50 so I could compare pictures. I'm considering trading in my Nikon for a Sony Alpha A55.

Here are some comparison pics from the two days.

Just down from the house: Nikon

Nikon: went for the shallow depth of field

Now for some comparison shots

Canon

I actually like the Nikon picture here; though it goes a little to the purple end of the spectrum probably because of the post processing.

The Nikon

The Canon

Nikon: tree in front of a tree

Canon

Canon

Canon

Canon

 I like this one.

Canon

Canon

testing table entry

.		Burgerville	Dea's In n Out	Killer Burger	Skyline Restaurant	Grand Total
.	Howard		8	4	2	14
.	Jay	3	3	5	2	13
.	John		3	4	2	9
.	Grand Total	3	14	13	6	36

The BURGER Project - Killer Burger

Today we headed out to Killer Burger  at 4644 NE Sandy Blvd. The Oregonian did not include this eatery in its review of the 10 best burgers in town. Big oversight. This burger was fantastic

Howard, Jay, and John hanging 'round the street corner

As you can see from the photo below, the 3 of us brought the median age up quite a few years. It's a tiny spot long and narrow. When people are seated at all the tables it's tough to get through the crowd to place your order. There is a nice energy to the place. 

Long narrow space when you walk in

A fun thing is being able to see the grill and prep area when you order.

Cooking the burgers

Our burgers getting prepped and cooked

The timing seems to work out okay; once we got our order in, we found a place to sit. I'm pretty happy anticipating lunch.

Waiting with a smile on my face

With a smile like that on my face waiting; imagine the look on my face when this came out. Oh! That chees is belted perfectly on the patty; nice kaiser roll to hold all that meat and grease. The pickles were fantastic

YUM

Look how nice and crispy the edges are on that burger; but it's not dry at all. 

Jay pauses for the photo before digging in

The lady over Jay's right shoulder was pretty amused by us old guys taking pictures and comparing burgers so closely. She asked if we were from out of town. I said "Kind of; Beaverton".

And notice; they server BEER! Jay had the Ninkais IPA which he really liked.

Jay ready to take a bite. Notice how we are all smiling!

Another look. Jay, John and I all ordered the same: Classic Burger; cheese burger with bacon.

John ready to dig in.

Ratings & Comments
 Note that the "Overall" rating column is not an average of the burger, side, drink, ambience, and service, It is a separate rating that pulls together all the personal intabigles.

Hamburger

Ambience & Atmosphere

Overall

I think Killer Burger is the best of the three places we've visited so far. We definitely recommend it