Brisket - Blog Posts

Bridget getting silly

can you please draw vriska since shes now a marketable plushie

theyre multiplying burn them

Main Dishes - Corned Beef - Glazed Corned Beef with Lentils Brisket is simmered on top of the stove with vegetables and pickling spices, then topped with a honey mustard glaze, and baked in the oven. Lentils seasoned with chili sauce are a highly recommended accompaniment.

Why is all transfem representation in video games 😭. Madeline, Bridget, and now Vivian. Don't get me wrong, I love them, but sometimes I don't want to pay money and play a whole game for representation... still love them all, though. <3

Could rlly use some cheesecake and brisket right about now…

#100 Ben-Hur - A Film of Epic Porportions

As the first post for the AFI Challenge, this is a bit of a rough draft for posts down the road. I'm trying to hammer out the formula for these still, but without further ado here is...

The Good - The Bad - The Reason - The Food

                                   The Good:

The genre classification of William Wyler's 1959 classic is "epic", and it lives up to its name.  The film's running time is 3 hours and 42 minutes and spans the course of many years, just like its Greek namesakes. We follow our hero, jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) as he is betrayed, enslaved, rectified and vindicated.  There is Roman indulgence and opulence, there is injustice, there is a slave ship, there is a sea battle, there are sheiks, there is leprosy, there is Jesus Christ, and there is, of course...

               Ben-Hur's horses are genuine Lipizzaners; Messala's have been dyed black.

A CHARIOT RACE! This race is one of the most famous scenes in movie history for good reason. It. Is. Awesome. Once you've reached the intermission and popped in disc two (you read that all correctly), you're a bit weary. You think this movie might never end. So much has happened, but all you can remember is Charlton Heston regularly looking like he's throwing up in his mouth then swallowing the bile back down again. Until! The chariot race. 

It took the team three weeks to film with nine teams of live horses and drivers in the beating Italian sun.  The scene lasts a total of 9 gripping minutes when our hero finally exacts his revenge on Messala (Stephen Boyd), once his closest friend, now his betrayer!

                   Gore Vidal stated that in his (uncredited) over-haul of the screenplay that he wrote in homoerotic subtext to Judah and Messala's relationship. The actors later claimed ignorance, but come on.

Contrary to popular myth, and to the credit of the crew, no one actually died during the chariot race.  The props department made individual jointed and weighted dummies that would perfectly mimic the human body's reaction to be run over by several teams of galloping horses and chariot wheels.

Finally, it's a good story. Like so many stories set in Roman times, we have a man unjustly set into servitude and we get his redemption.  We're rooting for this very toothy, robust, blue-eyed Jew to get back to his mother and sister.

The Bad:

                                       This guy is definitely a Jew and definitely not a gun enthusiast. 

It is long.  It is so long. It is very, very, very long. And for a movie that is just shy of four hours, its pacing is surprisingly off.  One minute we're on a slave ship, then a minute of horses parading later Judah is a Roman statesman, yet another five minutes later he is returning to Jerusalem after years of living it up and racing chariots in Rome. It's jarring. You really have to prepare yourself to take on this endeavor. There's also a love story that is lazily and unnecessarily tossed in. It neither pleases nor sates me.

The Reason:

Ben-Hur is one of two films ever to win 11 academy awards (the other is Titanic). However, it is the most winning film ever at the Academy Awards because back in 1959 there were only 12 categories.  This means Ben-Hur won every, single award except one, best screenplay.  And we thought this year's Grammys were predictable.

It's also a classic in so many ways. It's a tale as old as Rome, told in the Roman fashion. It is classic Hollywood to its core in the lavish set decoration and lengths to achieve authenticity, in its acting and its grandeur. The story's uniqueness comes in that it is at once nothing at all to do with the life of Jesus Christ and everything to do with the life, and death, of Jesus Christ.

                             You probably don't believe me that this is the coolest scene in the movie.

And in, what I'm sure is going to be a common theme during this process, what I might look at as old and hokey, was ground-breaking. It set the standard by which everything from that point on was measured, earning it the #100 spot.

The Food!

For this film, I wanted to make something that embodied the clash of cultures in the story. I finally came up with making a Roman slow-cooked brisket. Brisket is, to me, a strong representative of Jewish food, with any Jew I've ever met claiming his/her mom makes the best (to the mothers' delight, I'm sure).

To showcase the Roman culture crush, I first cooked bacon in my dutch oven, leaving the fat to sear the brisket with. I then made a pretty standard braising base with carrots, celery, onions, red wine, and tomatoes. I then covered the brisket in the partially cooked bacon and nestled it in for 2.5 hours.

Of course, no braise would be complete without bread to sop up all the juices and goodness.  I made a simple garlic parmesan pretzel bread under the broiler.

We ate like the Roman senate, ad nauseum.