Recipe of the Month - January

[shipperx]

Saw this on petzipellepingo's journal the other day:

brutti_ma_buoni has come up with the idea to cook something new from existing recipe books, one a month. Because I don't know about you, but I tend to get down to a standard few selections from each book and then only get them out for those recipes. And I am giving these massive books too much houseroom for that. Which sounds like fun. So I'm going to give this a try and she suggested the second Monday of the month so that would be the 13th.

I tend to cook more on weekends, and today being cold and gray, I thought I'd spend time doing some comfort food. So the recipe I'm trying this month is a classic pot roast with roasted vegetables (sounds good for a nasty gray winter's day)

2 teaspoon2 chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon Hungarian sweet paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon (packed) golden brown sugar
1 2-3 pound boneless beef chuck roast
3 ounces slab bacon, cut into 1x1/2-inch rectangles
1 cup dry red wine
1/2 cup low-salt chicken broth
1 large onions, thinly sliced
6 small shallots, peeled
6 garlic cloves, peeled
2 bay leaf
2 large carrots peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 medium parsnips cut into 1-inch pieces
Don't care for parsnips and don't have any around, so I'm going to use 1 small turnip root instead
1 small celery root, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup mushrooms

Combine first six ingredients as a rub for the chuck roast

Preheat oven to 350F degrees.

Cook bacon on low heat in heavy pan such as a dutch oven until lightly crisp. Remove bacon, leaving behind the drippings.

Increase the heat and brown roast on all sides. Maintain heat so that the meat sizzles but does not burn. Appx 15-20 minutes

Remove meat. Retain 2tbs of drippings.

Deglaze the pan, adding wine to the drippings and scraping up the browned bits. Boil until reduced by half (appx 5 minutes).

Add broth and bacon.

Place roast on top of bacon.

Scatter onions, shallots, garlic and bay leaf around the roast.

Cover and cook for 1 - 1 1/2 hours, depending on the size of your roast (Turn the roast over every 20-30 minutes for more even cooking. Add water by the 1/4cp as needed if dry).

Remove meat from pan. Add vegetables to bottom of the pan then return the meat. Cook until vegetables are fork tender and the meat's internal thermometer is 130F for medium rare to 150 to medium well.

---

So, that's my plan for the day. We'll see.

ETA: Made it. The flavor was quite good. Very nummy. The beef was a bit tough. Next time I make it I'll probably look for a more marbled roast and will lower the temp to 300F and cook longer but lower.

Comments

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

I really like that idea. I was considering the option of transcribing favorite recipes out of big books and then sending them back into the wild for other cooks, but I do like this idea!

This also looks like a delicious recipe.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I enjoy have a day a month to do something out of the ordinary. And the recipe was quite good flavor-wise. The beef was a bit tough so next time I'll probably lower the temperature for the roasting even if it means going a longer time.

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I hadn't thought of using a rub on a pot roast. Hmm...

Let us know how it comes out.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The flavor was very good, but the beef was a bit more tough than I would like. Next time I'll probably look for a more marbled cut and will reduce the temperature even if it means cooking longer. It wasn't tough-tough. But I would work a bit more toward tenderizing next time.

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a perfect recipe for a cold winter's day. brutti_ma_buoni's idea is wonderful. I have several dozen cookbooks and probably cook one or two dishes out of each one. They need to serve me better than that!

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm so glad this has struck a chord with people. I suspect it will help me to keep myself up to it too. And there are going to be throwings-out of books that don't have anything new to offer me, I think. I've been in my current place for over 8 years and my shelves are bursting!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The idea is really neat. I think it can be fun. (And now I have good leftovers for a frigid Monday lunch!)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I thought it sounded like a neat idea too.

And it was quite good for a cold winter's day (plus lunch leftovers!)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to ask - and you got the short straw - why do so many American recipes ask for kosher salt? How can salt not be kosher? What is the difference between kosher salt ans ordinary cooking salt? I usually use sea salt. Why would kosher be better?

Any idea?

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Why they call for it? No idea. They taste the same. There are some Jewish rules about its preparation and I think it may have to be blessed or something. More prosaically, its a far more coarse/large crystal salt than table salt and especially sea salt that tends to be fine grain. It also doesn't clump and isn't iodized. Why that makes it more preferable for recipe writers I don't know. (And I just used regular table salt.)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

More prosaically, its a far more coarse/large crystal salt than table salt and especially sea salt that tends to be fine grain.

Ah - that explains it! Another thing where the same word(s) mean slightly different things to Americans and Europeans! Sea salt to us looks like this -



Thank you for taking the time to explain!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It's possible to buy coarse sea salt, but the default tends to be fine grain. And, yeah, kosher salt pretty much looks like your picture.