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Sandie Bolze has a special recipe she uses to make brisket for holidays.
ron medvescek / arizona daily star
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Sandie's Holiday Brisket
Serves 15-20 people.
* 1 garlic bulb
* 1 4- to 5-pound brisket
* Pepper and paprika to taste
* 4 onions, cut in thick slices
* 1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
* 1 envelope Lipton dry onion soup
* 1 12-ounce jar of Heinz chile sauce (not cocktail sauce)
Peel 6-8 cloves of garlic and slice in thirds. Pierce meat and insert them all around top and bottom. Season meat with pepper and paprika. Don't add salt because there is salt in the dried soup.
Sear the meat by placing it fat side up on a broiler pan without the rack and broil about five minutes until brown. Turn and broil other side to brown.
Meanwhile, put the onion slices on the bottom of the slow cooker pot (or in the bottom of a covered roasting pan).
Place browned meat and drippings on top of onions. (The onions absorb the fat as well as add flavor and make gravy.)
Combine the cranberry, soup mix and chile sauce. Add water to the empty chile sauce bottle and add to the mixture. Mix all together and pour over the roast. Cover in the slow cooker for 6-8 hours.
If you're cooking in a covered roasting pan, plan on 3-4 hours of cooking in 350-degree oven. Either roasting method works well.
When done, take the meat from the pot, separating it from the gravy. Place both in the refrigerator.
Next day, remove and discard fat from gravy. Slice the roast and place in roasting pan, covering the meat with gravy. Cover and heat in a 350-degree oven for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Keep warm until serving time.
Passover Chocolate Bits Mandel Bread
* 2 sticks butter
* 2 cups sugar
* 6 eggs
* 2 3/4 cups matzo cake meal
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 3/4 cup potato starch
* 2 3-ounce bittersweet Passover chocolate candy bars, chopped into small pieces
* 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts
* 2 teaspoons cinnamon
* 2 tablespoons sugar
Cream butter and sugar and add eggs one at a time, beating after each egg. Sift together cake meal, salt and potato starch; fold into egg mixture.
Add chocolate pieces and nuts and mix well.
Butter a large baking sheet and divide dough in half, forming two 2-inch- diameter loaves.
The dough is sticky, so to do this, use wet hands to form and shape the loaves.
Mix the sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle the tops of the loaves.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Slice while warm and place the slices on wax paper to cool. The slices should be about a quarter-inch to a half-inch thick.

Food

Her brisket is a must for family gatherings

By Rosalie Robles Crowe
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.03.2008
Sandie Bolze is known for her holiday brisket.
Friends say to her, "You bring the brisket," whenever they get together for potluck dinner at somebody's house.
Her sons-in-law have dubbed it a favorite, so they're happy when she makes it for holidays (Christmas, Easter, Passover) or anytime there's a large gathering of friends and family.
Wait — Christmas, Easter and Passover?
"Joe is Catholic, I'm Jewish, and we've been married 40 years," Bolze said. "We go to St. Mark's Catholic Church every Sunday and Congregation Or Chadash every Friday night."
The couple has six "yours, mine and ours" kids, Bolze said. "He had two, I had one, and we had two of our own."
She laughs as she talks of their early days.
When the children were ages 3, 4, 5 and 6, "I had my own nursery school."
Saturday, Bolze will serve her holiday brisket — recipe doubled for about about 35 people — for the celebration of the family's Passover Seder.
Where did you get the recipe?
"Originally, I just used my mother's recipe, cooking the meat with onions, carrots and celery. But then onion soup mix became popular (as meat seasoning, among other things), so I started using that (in the recipe).
"Then my cousin in San Diego told me about her recipe with the cranberry and chile sauces. But it was too sweet, so I combined the two recipes, and I added the garlic because Joe and I are big garlic fans."
It sounds like this definitely is a holiday dish. Do you ever make it for other occasions?
"I make it for any time there's a crowd — for beach parties (the Bolzes are from Long Island, N.Y., and winter in Sun City Vistoso), and earlier this year I invited my husband's Sun City swim team and their spouses over for dinner.
"If you cook it (the brisket) a little longer, it falls apart. I serve it on buns with potato salad. It's easy to prepare. You can add barbecue sauce to it when you warm it up and you have barbecue beef."
What about the Passover Chocolate Bits Mandel Bread cookies? Is that an old family recipe, too?
"I got the recipe 37 years ago from a friend on Long Island," she said, adding that usually Passover cookies are dry and kind of tasteless.
"But these are so good — the absolute best Passover cookie recipe. I make them whenever we have a big family gathering."
Of course, to do that, she buys extra matzo cake meal, potato starch and Passover chocolate candy, ingredients that are available only for Passover. She keeps it in the freezer so she can have it on hand during the year.
The recipe is a time-consuming one, Bolze warned, but well worth the effort.
Family Favorites
● Contact reporter Rosalie Crowe at 573-4105 or at rcrowe@azstarnet.com.
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