Hot salt beef (PM)

As I've mentioned before, having a slice of salami in my hand creates thes most difficult of struggles between my inner vegetarian and my inner fat and spice lover. A struggle that I am constantly amazed the vegetarian always wins. And while I'm sure a hot beef roll with mustard is delicious, happily chunks of beef, at least in pictorial form, do nothing for me. But delicious good at midnight, well I sure as hell like the sound of that. Well done, London.

Yum things! (PM)

Is that the same jar of coconut and chocolate spread I gave you for christmas? Because if it is, you have marvellous restraint. That stuff lasts days at my house. Mere days.

But this is a yum thing that lasted a little longer.

OK, big rolls of meat may not appeal to everyone, but if you dig on meat, stay with me.  This is a beef brisket that I brined for two weeks in order to turn in to hot salt beef, the cousin of corned beef. It seems brisket is the kind of cut that contains a lot of connective tissue, which needs a little coaxing to break down and taste delicious. Brining helps with that. So in it went in to a brine bath that sat in my fridge for two weeks. Every day I turned the brisket over, to make sure it was even. The brine needed to get even with the brisket and I let it.

After the brining,  it looked like this:

Eww. It did not look pretty. But it was ready to cook.

I simmered it for four hours, again this is to make sure that the final result is nice and tender.  They say two hours is enough, but the longer the tenderer. So as you can imagine, after four hours it was so tender it would fall apart at a whisper.

In the great tradition of hot salt beef (there is one, apparently), I turned it in to a sandwich with lettuce, caramelised onion and hot english mustard. Delicious.  This photo does it no justice.

Then I turned it in to a second sandwich with all those things plus cheese and pickles. 

Deliciouser!