Evie Grossman is known for her beef brisket. She is a party planner, she is picky, picky picky–bordering on anal! An invitation to one of her dinner parties is a coveted event, and this night would be no exception, for we had been informed beforehand that she was serving her Famous Beef Brisket.
Forty guests had been invited to celebrate Evie’s husband Marvin’s newly acquired status as a retired podiatrist, and to bid farewell to all of us who spend our winters in the sunny south.
The evening was warm and sultry. The women were decked out in upscale cruise wear, while their husbands were dressed in casual golf attire, as most had come directly from their eighteen holes of Saturday golf.
Some guests arrived early while others straggled in, but thirty-nine had assembled by 7:00, having entered through the front door, down the hall to the kitchen, on to the sun room and out the back door to the patio. Seventy-eight dirty shoes trudged through their entire home.
A bar had been set up on the spacious patio, chock-full with wine, beer, booze and soft drinks. Long tables festooned in bright colors were set with the usual fancy hors ‘d oeuvres: warm dips composed with exotic ingredients, home made finger foods, cheeses, crackers, spreads, and bowls of ice crowned atop with gigantic shrimp.
The party was in full swing. Jimmie Buffet was blaring to his Parrot Heads thru the speakers, the alcohol was flowing, the women were air-kissing and gossiping, and the husbands were replaying their eighteen holes of golf–hole by boring hole, and settling up their debts.
I just happened to be near the back door when it suddenly opened and I heard Evie’s voice beckon me in hushed, but frantic tones from the darkened interior–”Jan–get in here, bring Helen and Carol and lock the door behind you.”
We three entered the door to the sunroom. There was Evie–sauce and brisket cascading down the entire length of her body. Further on, in the kitchen, brisket was dripping from the ceiling, running down the walls, onto the countertops and puddling on the inlaid wooden floor.
As Monk, the famous television sleuth, would say, “Here’s what happened:” To keep her kitchen spotless and to avoid unnecessary clean-up, Evie did something she’d never done before. She decided to cook her brisket in a disposable aluminum pan recently purchased from Costco for the occasion. The twenty pounds of sliced brisket was more than the flimsy pan could endure, and when she removed it from the oven, the pan imploded upon itself, exploded onto the floor and then erupted like Vesuvius over Evie and the entire kitchen.
Being a Jewish American Princess isn’t Evie’s only claim to royalty: she is also the Queen of the F-bomb! “Jesus God almighty– what the bleep am I going to do? I have forty bleeping people waiting to be served the bleeping brisket and it’s all over my bleeping floor. I am So bleeped!” (bleeping/sobbing/bleeping/sobbing/bleeping/sobbing.)
Silly volunteer that I am, I immediately took control–ordered her to take a shower and show me where she kept her spatulas and dish rags. Carol, Helen and I scooped pounds of brisket from her floor into proper baking dishes, soaked up all the sauce we could muster with dish rags, then squeezed the liquid mess over the briskets.
We took soap and water to her upholstered furniture, scrubbed the walls, the counter tops, the cabinetry and her computer. Sue arrived late, became aware of what was occurring, found a wet mop and began swabbing the juicy floor, which we had all been slipping and sliding on.
Evie reappeared, freshly showered and dressed and swore us all to bleeping secrecy. This was not the first time we had been instructed to keep our secrets “in the vault”, but those are stories for another day.
Dinner was only fifty minutes late. By this time, all the guests were too well-oiled to notice, and hungry enough to wolf down Evie’s noodle koogle, rice casseroles, mounds of assorted salads, warm rolls, platters of sliced tomatoes with fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella, twelve- year aged Balsamic vinegar, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, and her now (in)Famous Beef Brisket!
Truth be told, all forty (well, actually, thirty-five, for Evie, Helen, Sue, Carol and I abstained,) licked their chops, proclaimed it the “greatest brisket we’ve ever eaten,” and each of the wives begged Evie for her recipe.*
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*(To the best of my knowledge, no one ended up in Urgent Care.)
Jan Chapman
November, 2012
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