And Now For Something a Little Bit Different

Along with one of my favorite recipes for a crowd, a vintage menu, a great gift suggestion and...the triumphant return of the sweetbread.

Not exactly my usual topic, but as I was watching the Oscars and contemplating the strangeness of a Wim Wenders movie being Japan’s entry this year, I remembered that Wenders spent a long time in San Francisco working on his movie Hammet.

It was 1978, and I was a huge Wenders fan. (I loved Alice in the Cities and The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick.) I somehow persuaded my editors at New West to give me an assignment to profile him.

The piece never ran. “You fell in love with him,” my editor said. “A reporter should never do that.”

She wasn’t wrong. But reading this piece now I think she was wrong too; this makes me want to go back and watch every one of Wenders’ movies.

I was living in Berkeley when I wrote that, still working at The Swallow Restaurant which was the restaurant of The Pacific Film Archives (where I’d seen all the Wenders movies). So I thought I should post a menu of that moment in time.

It’s corned beef brisket season, but I like uncorned brisket better. So here’s my favorite crowd-pleaser, a dish that gives you something deliriously delicious for almost no effort.

This is, essentially, a Belgian beef carbonnade, made with brisket instead of stewing meat.  But the principle is the same: you’re braising beef in a slew of onions, using beer as the liquid. What makes this so satisfying is that you cook it ahead of time, cool it, refrigerate it overnight and then remove all the fat.  What you end up with is very tender meat in a deeply aromatic sauce.

Beer Brisket
Begin with a 4-5 pound brisket, dry it well and shower it with salt and pepper. Slick a large pan with neutral oil, get it hot, and sear the meat on both sides. Remove it to platter.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Slice 4 to 6 onions (you cannot have too many) by cutting them in half lengthwise and then cutting them into long ribbons, and cook them in the fat remaining in the pan until they’ve become golden and extremely aromatic.

Put half of the onions into a large casserole, add the brisket and top with the remaining onions.  Toss in a bay leaf, a bottle of beer, and a splash of balsamic vinegar and bring to a boil. Cover and put into the oven. (If you have a bouillon cube of some kind, you might want to throw that in as well.) Now relax for three and a half hours, enjoying the wonderful aroma that begins to creep into every corner of your house.

Remove from the oven, uncover, and allow to cool completely.  Then put into the refrigerator overnight (or up to a couple of days).

Remove all the congealed fat from the top of the pot.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Remove the brisket and slice it, against the grain.  Put half of the onion sauce into an 8 by 13 inch pan (really, any flat pan will do), top with the sliced brisket and the remaining sauce, cover very well with foil and reheat in the oven for about an hour and a quarter.

Taste, season with salt, pepper and perhaps another splash of balsamic vinegar and serve to 8 to 10 very happy people.

The best gifts are those that offer something more than the object itself. That was the case with these beautiful walking cat chopsticks a friend just sent me.

I love them so much that I immediately went online to see if I could buy another pair…. and entered a whole new world. The Mitsubi site tells. you everything about chopsticks, about lacquer, about the process of inlaying the abalone design. It’s fascinating.

And dangerous. Because they also offer an entire array of objects that I instantly yearned to acquire. First I trolled through their beautiful tableware, and then I was on to all manner of objects from edo glass to motif objects, like their fantastic plates and bowls featuring cats.

As I said, dangerous.

There are still a few places available on the fantastic trip we’ve put together this fall. Information at dinnerwithfriendsabroad.com

Have you noticed that sweetbreads, which were once a restaurant staple before they disappeared along with all the other organ meats, are making a comeback? I have to admit this makes me deliriously happy; in the hands of an excellent chef sweetbreads become mysteriously aromatic clouds.

I’ve loved the versions I’ve recently encountered at many new restaurants, but my favorite may be the very classic ris de veau Dubarry they are serving at the new Cafe Boulud. The sweetbreads are glazed, served in a ginger-laced jus and surrounded by cauliflower in various guises.

Sweetbreads are neither sweet nor breads. They are the thymus and pancreas glands of young animals, and while they are often described as gamy, they aren’t. They are also, it should be noted, a pain to prepare - which is one excellent reason to order them when you go out.