guide to the jewplexed

A Roast for My Mother


Cutbacks in the Jewish kitchen? Heaven forbid. But if tough economic times and tighter household budgets call for revised menus, including tougher cuts of meat, then brisket would be my top choice.

Especially around holiday time, when we want to serve a houseful of guests, my wife and I use an easy brisket recipe created by my mother, Pearl Rodman. My mother, who was born in 1922 and died in 2008, learned to cook during the Great Depression, another period when people had to watch their pocket books. Her recipe is both evocative of that era, and her approach to life.

For Ashkenazi Jews like my grandmother Rebecca, who came to the U.S. with almost nothing, brisket was an affordable and tasty choice. My mother's recipe, reflecting that heritage, is simple; calling for easy to find and inexpensive to buy ingredients.

It's the recipe of an extreme moderate. Her cooking and approach to life never called for too much of this or that, nothing too spicy, or bland. Not that she didn't have her opinions. In the early 1970's, I remember her listening to a speech by George McGovern on TV, and commenting how she disliked that the man running for president was quoting extensively from the New Testament. She didn't think much of Richard Nixon either, or any political discussion at the table for that matter (though her pointed comments from the kitchen were somehow allowed). Unlike the famous song's advice, she liked to "mess with mister in between," preferring things right in the middle, an inclination that unfortunately seems out of whack with today's political climate.

She also didn't like things: people, movies, and especially food, too sweet, or too sour, which you will taste in the end result of her recipe. pot roast by pearl

During her 70's, there was one big life change though. Influenced, I think, by the choices of her children, and her desire to have a family that could all sit down to the same meal--she began keeping kosher. When most are settling in to their ways, her kitchen was turned topsy, converted to two sets of dishes, with all the cabinet doors marked, milchig, for dairy, and fleishig, for meat. In respect for that change (and in pursuit of better flavor), let me suggest, though it is costlier, that you consider using a kosher brisket for the recipe.

To achieve the desired tenderness, in many parts of the country, brisket is barbequed. My mother's recipe, like most of Jewish origin, calls for cooking the brisket over a couple of hours like a pot roast. I use an oval shaped covered roasted pan. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Here's what you will need for:

Pearl Rodman's Sweet and Sour Brisket

1 brisket (be sure to trim the fat)
1 to 2 beef bouillon cubes
Juice from half a lemon
½ cup of raisins
1 small can tomato sauce
1/3 cup of brown sugar

Add a cup of water to the pan, dissolve bouillon cubes. Add the rest of the ingredients. Add brisket, and then add enough water to just cover. Cover pan and cook until tender and allowing sauce to reduce. Once cooked, if you like it stringy, slice with the grain, more solid, cut against. Serve with flat egg noodles.

While cooking, perhaps just as importantly, enjoy the smell. While waiting for it to finish, sit, stand, do yoga, and inhale deeply. There's nothing like the smell of a cooking brisket in sweet and sour sauce. It's balanced, pleasant, of humble origins; a dish that should grace every table.


Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."