The perfect dish for a tricky time of year: zero work, slow-cooked beef brisket
Plus, confessions of a kitchen kit hoarder and why slow-cookers are the best kitchen appliance ever invented
I’m a sucker for new kitchen kit. Visit my house and you’ll see. If you could pry open my largest kitchen drawer — one of several oversized ladles may have wedged it shut — you’d find a farrago of apparatus, some used daily, most of it forgotten. It’s like an archaeological assay of two-decades’ worth of spending incontinence.
A potato ricer, like the BFG’s garlic press, I found among the housecoats and big knickers at a market in Italy (essential for making perfect mash, although I mostly forget to use it). A tiny carved wooden spoon plucked from the glorious chaos of a car boot in Dorset (used never). A mingle-mangle of measuring jugs, mixing bowls, defunct meat probes, several kitchen scales and sugar thermometers. A posse of blades for a lolst mandoline. Sundry food processor attachments (functions unknown). Piping bags and nozzles (used only in my nightmares). A plastic object (baffling) that looks like a truncheon or an item purchased from Lovehoney but ISN’T. A pair of silver castanet-style mussel eaters like these (gifted, never removed from box). An avocado hugger and a mango seed remover. And that’s a truncated journey through just one drawer.
I know. Elizabeth David would be having conniptions. She was right to rant about the pointlessness of most kitchen gadgets, summed up, she felt, by the garlic press. The ideal consistency when adding garlic to a dish was mushy and paste-like, she wrote in Garlic Presses are Utterly Useless. “It is quickly achieved by the crushing of a peeled clove lightly with the back edge of a really heavy knife blade. Press a scrap of salt into the squashed garlic. That’s all. Quicker, surely, than getting the garlic press out of the drawer, let alone using it and cleaning it.”
It’s true. I don’t need most of my kitchen guff because all I really use is a modest collection of tools. A box grater and microplane, roasting tins, a sieve, some pots and pans, scales, a colander, chopping boards, a few mixing bowls and measuring jugs, wooden spoons, spatulas and tongs. I also regularly use my food processor and meat thermometer. Plus, of course, my slow cookers.
Yes, that’s plural because I have more than one (the oldest is a bit small but I can’t throw it out because … you just never know). And now that summer’s skedaddled I dusted one of them off this week (narrowly avoiding concussion when my heavy madeleine tin, which was balanced on top, fell crashing down). I’d argue it’s one of the most useful kitchen appliances ever invented.
That’s a view I’ve inherited from my mum, who cooked a simple and revolving rota of delicious dishes when she were kids, including Crock-Pot stews. We would dash out of the house for school in the morning, leaving the contents of the pot an unlikely assemblage of raw chicken and vegetables floating in water. By the time we opened the front door in the afternoon, it had melded into a beautiful stew and the warm fug of a comforting dinner had permeated the entire house. Today’s recipe sings from that same playbook, and is pot au feu in style and simplicity.
Chuck some vegetables, herbs, aromatics, stock and a chunk of beef brisket in a slow cooker and then go about your business. There’s no hands-on cooking involved - no browning or frying onions first - yet the results are sumptuous, hearty, certainly, but not heavy, as the meat is simmered and eaten in broth rather than a rich wine sauce (or served with a side of polenta or mash). It’s not the kind of stew you find on the road to gout, but you’ll still be wanting a second bowlful (extra joy if you snag a eight-hour simmered garlic clove). The added bonus is that once you’ve popped everything into the pot there’s nothing to do, so you have plenty of time to clear out that kitchen drawer.