I lured my friend Carol over with promise of buffalo wings (didn’t get any pix of those). For the main course I made barbecued brisket. I used a recipe from some one of those blogs I look at, Pioneer Woman or something. This was guaranteed to be the very best you ever ate. I was unconvinced. (To be fair about it, I like her, she seems like a nice person and her recipes are great – see here she’s certainly no Paula Deen, that horrid excuse for a human being) It called for like 3 cups of soy sauce and while I like soy sauce enough, it has a very strong taste that didn’t really seem to be something I was gonna want a $150 brisket braising in. I got this at my local butcher, Bavette, and it’s pricey (OK, not $150, though). I decided I was going to serve it on toast like they used to do with steak “sandwiches.” Back in my youth, and out with my aunts who liked a boy to have a healthy appetite, the steak, tenderloin, sandwich came on a slice of toast that was saturated with “jus.” Impossible to eat like a sandwich but that gravy bread, er, jus bread, ooh mama.
If I can digress here for a second. The French term “au jus” means with juice. I am forever wanting to, but never do, tell people who refer to it as awe juice. As in, “Would you like some awe juice with that?” It’s just juice and correctly pronounced it’s joo. And even more specifically, au is pronounce OH. So if you were bound and determined to say au jus, it’s Oh shjoo. The J sound is sort of slippery.
Anyway, so I made the damn brisket with some soy. Braised for 3 hours, covered. I bought some unsliced brioche to make thick buttered toast to soak up the jus and served it, in it’s falling apart glory, with barbecue sauce slopped over it. I’m not sure what the Pioneer Woman might think of it but I’d be happy to go head to head with her in a competition.
And oh those leftovers.
