Make the best brisket, every time

Hanukkah, a.k.a. major brisket season, is here. A classic Jewish holiday food, brisket is a cinch to prepare and a great accompaniment to latkes, which require much more hands-on attention. One large brisket can feed many and last for several meals (it's better the next day and improves every day thereafter), easing the cooking pressure for the eight nights of candle lighting.

I must admit, as a child and well into adulthood, I hated brisket. Granted, my experience with it was limited to what my mother made (fortunately, very infrequently); it was always stringy, tough and not particularly flavorful. Because she was an otherwise excellent cook (and a caterer), I assumed that what she served was how it was supposed to be.

For years, I kept my disdain for brisket to myself for fear of committing Jewish culinary treason. Eventually, I needed to know what all the fuss was about — and to feed a crowd for the first Passover seder that I was hosting. So I pulled out some Jewish cookbooks and decided on Joan Nathan's recipe for Moroccan-style brisket from her book "Jewish Cooking in America." It called for ginger, saffron and olives, which appealed to me largely because it was so unlike what my mother served and also because I love