We don’t have many recipes in our family that have been passed down from generation to generation. I can’t think of many dishes my mother made from her childhood. One reason might be that my maternal grandmother favored very traditional Ashkenazi recipes and had a reputation as an uneven cook. My mother, Abbey Silverman Rockmaker, was an excellent cook, adventurous and fearless in the kitchen, who preferred more contemporary and international dishes.

My family used to joke that grandma’s pot roasts or briskets only had flavor when she burnt the onions. My mom, though, was the Queen of Pot Roast and made her red wine pot roast regularly. It was a special treat when she came to visit us in California from New York. She would always make two pot roasts during her visit: one for us to eat with her and a second for the freezer that we would enjoy after she left.

Neither my two sisters nor I ever wrote down how she made her pot roast so when I first tried to replicate her recipe after she passed away, I talked to my sisters and got a bit of a shock: She made it differently for each of us! Her California version had mushrooms, her New York one didn’t. She used apple juice in some versions and not others. I’m sure the seasoning varied as well.

Below is Abbey’s Red Wine Pot Roast – the closest my sisters and I could come to re-creating it. I consider it the standard for pot roast or brisket. It is a classic meat and potatoes comfort food and the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)