Happy Chanukah!!

This year, I'm celebrating with brisket and latkes. Specifically, this Bon Appetit recipe for Braised Brisket with Hot Sauce and Mixed Chiles and this Smitten Kitchen recipe for Latke Waffles.

The latkes are not new to me; the brisket is.

Planning!

After reading through the recipe, I decided to scale and serve it based on the nutritional info; it may be a special occasion meal, but I'm still going to be eating it as leftovers for a little while, so I can't entirely go hog wild. The tastiness of the food itself will keep the special occasion party going.

Dividing the brisket in half and freezing half means that I'll be able to enjoy it in a different form in a few months (possibly tacos? we'll see!). Dividing the half that I eat this week into six portions combined with the latke recipe also divided into sixths yields a high-ish calorie meal that I've planned to balance this week with salads and this braised cabbage recipe from Food52 (I'm totally obsessed with this recipe... don't worry; I'll make it again soon, with step-by-step photos).

Here's the nutritional breakdown from Fitbit...

Groceries I had on hand...

For the brisket:

• vegetable oil
• kosher salt
• black pepper
• raw garlic
• sriracha
• light brown sugar
• apple cider vinegar

For the latkes:

• potatoes
• baking powder
• table salt
• black pepper
• AP flour
• eggs
• nonstick spray

Groceries I had to buy...

For the brisket:

• brisket (3.8lb @ 5.99/lb = $23.30)
• red bell peppers (3 medium/1.03lb @ $2.49/lb = $2.56)
• jalapeños (4 whole/.27lb @ $1.99/lb = $.54)
• long peppers (4 whole/.25lb @ $2.99/lb = $.75)
• red onion (1 large/.65lb @ $1.49/lb = $.97)

For the latkes:

• onion (1 medium/.3lb @ $.59/lb = $.18)

Total monies spent for the recipes in this post: $28.30

Total monies spent for each of these 6 meals (the brisket grocery costs divided in half, then divided into six, because half of the cooked brisket and sauce will go to the freezer)....

$2.37 per meal.

This is not a typo.

Cooking!

First, the brisket...

It seemed to me that the order in which the brisket recipe suggests doing things was a little inefficient, so I heated the broiler while I heated my dutch oven on the stove top. I pulled the brisket from the fridge to take a hint of the chill off of it, then I quickly washed and deseeded the peppers and put them on a sheet tray in the middle of the oven so that the broiler could hit them evenly and steadily.

A note on the peppers: yes, the recipe calls for "hot yellow chiles (such as banana or Hungarian wax peppers)" and yes, those are Italian sweet long peppers. Yes, I like spice like whoa, but this is what they had at the grocery store that looked good, and I'm cool with it.

While the peppers slowly charred, I heated the oil in the dutch oven. I seasoned the crap out of the brisket, and started to brown it. As I was browning the meat, I peeled the garlic and divided the red onion. I checked on the peppers, and pulled out a few jalapeños that were looking happily done, flipped the long peppers and the bells, then made the hot sauce/vinegar/sugar mixture. A note on the hot sauce: I had intended to use Frank's Red Hot, but discovered that I was out (bad planning, Anne! but seriously, I do put that shit on everything...), so I used sriracha instead. I have about 6 or 7 open bottles of hot sauce and chili sauce at any given moment.

I flipped the meat, then pulled the pan of peppers out of the oven and switched the oven from broil to bake (300F, per the recipe).

Once the meat was browned on both sides, I used tongs and a big ol' wok spatula to get it onto a sheet pan next to the dutch oven without much drama, then tossed in the onion and garlic and browned them, too.

Everything came out of the pot so that I could layer in the proper order...

...and then into the oven it went...

...it came out looking like this!

Knowing that I didn't have all day today to cook up this special occasion meal, I actually did all of that cooking last night, then cooled it, uncovered, on my kitchen counter on a rack (so that air could circulate underneath the pot as well) until the pot felt barely lukewarm on my bare hand, even the base of the pot. That took about an hour. Then I put the lid back on and transferred it into the fridge to live overnight. Today, I put it back in the oven at 250F to warm back up for an hour, then took it out to the stovetop, removing the veggies to a bowl and the brisket to my cutting board.

I reduced the sauce while the meat rested.

Once the meat had rested, I divvied it all up. Half the meat, veggies and sauce went into a bowl to shred and mix together for freezing, and I sliced the other half for serving with the latkes.

And at last, the latke waffles....

For these, I followed the recipe almost to the letter, with two tiny exceptions:

1. I used less onion, totally my personal preference having made the recipe in the past.
2. Because I had already decided this would make 6 meals, I weighed out the latke batter into six portions, and cooked six equal-sized waffles. Streamline all the things!

Here's how it went:

And then?

I ate my dinner.