Free Press Test Kitchen Recipe: Corned beef with Bourbon

Place the corned beef in a slow cooker. If the meat is too bigto lie flat, cut it in half and stack the pieces one atop theother. Add water to just cover the brisket. Add the bay leaves, peppercorns, allspice, cinnamon, mustard seeds and, if using, the chiles.Cover and cook on the low setting for 9 to 11 hours.Meanwhile,combine all the glaze ingredients and refrigerate until ready to use.When the brisket is done, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.Line a sided baking sheet with foil, and spray it with nonstick spray or brush with oil. Place the brisket on the foil and brush with the glaze. Turn it over and brush the other side, coating the entire surface. Bake for 20 minutes; baste every so often with any leftover glaze.
Remove it from the oven, and let it rest a few minutes before slicing against the grain. Serve with boiled or roasted potatoes as well as carrots and cooked cabbage if desired.From the other side of the kitchen, a big bowl of very thick spaghetti, Macaronia Thalassina ($18) contains a treasure trove of sweet succulent shrimp, mussels and chunks of meaty artichokes in a decadent buttery lemon wine sauce thick with feta, herbs and pine nuts.But it's not all nectar and ambrosia at Taki's.Android moves into the kitchen with Dacor's Discovery smart oven.Unfortunately, Diamantis appears to run the place a little too much on an economy of scarcity: on every visit the kitchen had an annoying habit of being out of this, that and/or the other.
Still, the charming and very competent wait-staff did the best they could. Sincere apologies and good-natured attempts to draw our interest in other directions did much to remind me that the unavailability of the very good Baklava ($7.50) -- house-made, and not the usual honey-dripping variety but clove-and-cinnamon-scented and delicately crunchy -- was not the earth-shattering crisis it originally appeared to be.It's been a long personal odyssey to find a good Greek restaurant in Cleveland, particularly one without the word "gyros" in its name. So for now, I'm willing to be like brave Ulysses and make the trek to Avon Lake. But it's going to be a bright day when a "Taki's Two" opens up somewhere east, on my side of the wine-dark Cuyahoga. The biography posted on his Senate website states: "Ron came to Washington because the federal government is bankrupting America. He thinks it is important for citizen legislators to ally with those who are seriously facing that reality."Johnson will appear on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning where he is likely to discuss the possibility of reaching a broad deal on the deficit and his meeting with the president.