The Passover-Hanukkah-Christmas Meat

(With tears, and using ingredients from a Middle Eastern store)

I love magic recipes—ones that don’t just taste good but that bring memories of someone who’s passed. I guess I could also call them teary recipes.

One of my favorites, a once-or-twice-a-year dish, is apricot brisket, a recipe passed down from a cousin long ago. I make it every year for our Passover Seder, often for Hanukkah, and occasionally for Christmas. This brisket is so good that my decades-long vegetarian daughter often made an exception and took a few bites each year before spreading the gravy on her kugel.

Years ago, my non-Jewish friend, Kris, and her family joined us for a Hanukkah feast—and let me tell you, cooking for Kris could be terrifying.  Not only was she a caterer and a great home cook—she was also outspoken. Very. If one’s dish had failed (or ever simply entered the land of bland), she let you know.

Thus, when she asked for the brisket recipe, I was thrilled. In fact, Kris liked Cousin Susan’s Brisket so much that she began serving it for Christmas, giving it a second identity when her sons crowned it with a new name. Thus, it morphed from being The Passover Brisket at our house to being crowned The Christmas Meat at theirs.

I love knowing that my family’s special brisket has an alias, as though my family recipe has joined the CIA.

And though I miss Kris, I have her recipes in my files and my across-all-holidays brisket to remember her.

It’s a rich, slow-cooked recipe, simple to make, using extraordinarily dowdy ingredients that turn into a beautiful to the eye, incredible to the mouth dish that fills the home with good smells. It’s also forgiving and open to change.

Passover/Christmas/Hanukkah Brisket

3-5 lbs brisket

1 -2 cloves minced garlic

3 onions

Butter

12 oz ketchup

4 apricot rolls

6 oz water

1/2 cup brown sugar

Sauté the onions in garlic and butter. Mix ketchup, water & sugar. Season the meat with salt. Pour the soft-cooked onions and then the gravy over the meat. Cover the meat with two apricot rolls.

Cover the pan (with foil or another cover) and bake for 1.5 hours at 350 degrees.

Turn the meat and cover with the two remaining apricot rolls. Cover the pan and bake for 45 minutes.

Remove the cover and bake for an additional 45 minutes. When done, the meat should be soft and break apart easily. Let it sit before slicing.

Truth: It often takes twice as long to cook till it falls apart—the way it should be—and sometimes longer. Think of the timing as this: cook till it falls apart with a fork.

(You can easily substitute apricot jam when it’s challenging to find the apricot rolls (usually found in Middle Eastern specialty stores), though the rolls provide a richer brisket. Sometimes, I use dried apricots along with the jam. You know, when I want the Passover-Christmas-Hanukah meat to become akin to candy-meat.

(Late breaking: seems I was unclear about apricot rolls AKA apricot leather! So see here: https://www.tasteofbeirut.com/amardeen/