RECIPES for the WEEK - 3/16 - Have a great week-end!

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Squash Dots Recipe

1 large acorn squash deseeded cooked

2 eggs

1 tbs honey

Puree in blender acorn squash, eggs, and honey. Pour into mini muffin tin

and bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes

Dana

Corned Beef

8 cups water

1-1/4 C pickling salt

1/2 cup honey

3 tablespoon pickling spices

6-8 pound beef brisket

Boil the water and salt, stir to dissolve. Add honey and spices, stir till

honey is mixed in. Chill. When chilled (40°) add brisket. Let sit in brine

for 10-12 days, stiring the brine every day and flipping the meat over every

other day. After 10-12 days prepare as usual. (Boil, bake, or slow cooker.)

Kathleen Katholeenie Gill <katholeenie@...>

Corned Beef

One 4 lb. brisket of beef

1/4 cup large-grained kosher salt

1 tsp. freshly ground pepper

2 tsp. ground ginger

1/2 tsp. ground cloves

2 bay leaves, crumbled

1 Tbs. honey

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

1/8 tsp. paprika

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup warm water

Wash and remove most of the fat from the brisket. Mix together all the

spices and the garlic and rub well into the brisket. Pour warm water over

the meat. Place in a large, nonmetal container.

Weight the meat down with a stone or brick and cover it with plastic wrap or

aluminum foil. (You can also place the ingredients in a plastic bag and

weight it down.) Refrigerate for 10 days to 2 weeks. Turn the meat every 2

to 3 days. Place the meat in a large pot of cold water. Bring to a boil and

throw away the water. Repeat 3 times. Cover with cold water again, bring to

a boil and cook over low heat, covered, for about 2 hours or until tender.

Cool, slice thin and place on a platter. Serve with mustard or horseradish.

Duclayan <gduclayan@...>

Corned Beef

Preserving meat for winter by soaking in salt brine is a time-honored

method. Corning is an ancient technique for preserving raw meat for long

periods. It involves rubbing the meat in a mixture of salt and spices and

then keeping it covered in the resultant juicy brine for a minimum of two

weeks or much longer. The familiar corned beef is one of the few remnants of

this practice still popular today. While it is very simple to purchase

corned beef in the supermarket, either in ready-to-cook bags or already

cooked and sliced, making it a home is almost as easy and much less

expensive. You also have the option of using different cuts of meat. If you

like corned beef you will like corned tongue. The flavor is identical, the

only difference is in texture and appearance. After the minimum period of

curing, the meat can be cooked and eaten and will be delicious. Longer

curing will result in richer flavor and will not harm the meat at all.

Several different cuts of beef as well as the tongue are excellent

candidates for corning, in fact, except for steaks, any cut can be brined.

Obviously, the brisket is a good choice and boneless chuck roast or round

roast are also very fine. An entire eye of round will make a splendid corned

beef subject and would be very nice served cold on a buffet. You do not have

to limit yourself to beef, either. For the truly adventurous foodie, a

corned pork roast is sure to be a big hit. Occasionally pork or lamb tongues

are sold at the supermarket,

these are also very good corned. If you live in a rural area where there is

a slaughterhouse, call and inquire about getting tongues. Often these tasty

items can be gotten for free or a very small cost.

The thing to remember is that while you are actually preserving the meat

with salt you are also adding a great deal of flavor with the additional

ingredients added to the curing mixture. You will be using black pepper,

allspice, thyme, sage, paprika, bay leaf, rutabaga, onions, carrots, and

garlic. If doing pork, be sure to collect some juniper berries as they add a

special dimension to the flavor of corned pork.

THE INGREDIENTS

For 10 to 12 pounds of meat you will need 1 and a half cups of coarse or

non-iodized salt (kosher salt is good to use but regular granulated salt

without the iodine works just as well), 3 tablespoons of honey, a generous

tablespoons of cracked black peppercorns, 2 teaspoons of allspice berries,

cracked, five or six sprigs of fresh thyme, a teaspoon of powdered sage, a

teaspoon of paprika, 7 or 8 bay leaves, broken into small pieces, a small

coarsely-chopped onion, chopped carrot, and 6 cloves of garlic, either

crushed or finely minced. For pork, add two tablespoons of fresh juniper

berries, broken with the flat of a knife. If you are only doing one tongue

or roast, reduce the amounts of ingredients accordingly.

THE METHOD

The corning process can be done in a large stone crock but is really much

easier if you use freezer zip-lock bags. Assemble enough bags to hold all

your different cuts of meat, one cut to a bag. Mix all the ingredients

together in a small bowl, except the juniper berries. Place all the meat in

a roasting pan and cover all sides with the salt mixture, rubbing it in

well. Put each piece of meat into a bag and divide the remaining salt

mixture among the bags. If you are doing a piece of pork, add the juniper

berries to that bag. Remove as much air as possible from each bag and seal.

If you have one of those vacuum sealers, this is a perfect use for it. You

want the meat to be bathed in the salt mixture at all times. Pack all the

bags into a large bowl or crock and weight them down under a plate and about

10 pounds of weight (use canned tomatoes or the like). Place in the bottom

of the fridge. Check the bags in a few hours. The juice should be running

freely from the meat. Massage each bag to work the cure into all the

crevices of the meat. Repack into the container, re-weight and return to the

fridge. Turn the bags and massage daily to make sure the cure is getting

into all sides of the meat. If a bag breaks, transfer the meat into a new

bag with all the juices

and about a quarter cup of salt. Leave the meat to cure for at least two

weeks, three is better, before cooking one. Before cooking, you will have to

soak the meat in several changes of

fresh cold water to remove the excess salt. The longer the meat is cured,

the longer it will take to soak. Twenty-four hours should be enough. The

meat will lose its rubbery texture and begin to feel like fresh raw meat

again. Because there is no saltpeter in this curing mix, the meat will not

be bright red. Don't worry, you didn't do anything wrong, this is what it

should look like. If you really want it to look like purchased corned meat,

find saltpeter at a pharmacy and add a half-teaspoon to the cure, but this

is not necessary and only adds questionable, perhaps carcinogenic,

substances to your food. There is no good reason to add nitrates to your

food other than asthetic ones. Get used to grayish-brown corned beef, it is

better for you!

COOKING

Put the refreshed meat in a pot and cover with water. Add a carrot, some

celery stalks with tops, a small onion, several sprigs of Italian parsley,

some sprigs of fresh thyme, 4 bay leaves, and 5 cloves of garlic, flattened

with the side of a knife. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer. Skim off any

foam that rises for the first few minutes then cover partially with a lid

and cook at the simmer until the tongue or roast can be pierced easily with

a fork. This will take 2 to 3 ½ hours, depending on the size of the meat

cut. If you will be serving the corned beef or tongue cold, allow to cool in

the cooking liquid. When cool, the tongue should be removed and the rough

skin carefully peeled off. It will usually come off in one or two large

pieces and this is MUCH easier if the tongue is still

slightly warm. Discard the skin. Also remove any small bones from the large

end of the tongue and discard. Put the meat in the fridge for several hours

or overnight. Tongue or corned beef should be sliced thinly and served with

mustard.

Duclayan <gduclayan@...>

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