Remember last week when I said I was going to learn to make roasts, and I started with the American, 1950s-style, dried-plus-condensed-soups-in foil? And it was better than I expected?
Yesterday I made the second one, and in an attempt to hit the polar opposite in chicness (but still fairly retro), I went with boeuf à la mode, a classic French pot roast.
How classic, you might ask? So classic that Samuel Pepys wrote about it:
Against noon we had a coach ready for us, and she and I to White Hall, where I went to see whether Sir G. Carteret was at dinner or no, our design being to make a visit there, and I found them set down, which troubled me, for I would not then go up, but back to the coach to my wife, and she and I homeward again, and in our way bethought ourselves of going alone, she and I, to go to a French house to dinner, and so enquired out Monsieur Robins, my perriwigg-maker, who keeps an ordinary, and in an ugly street in Covent Garden, did find him at the door, and so we in; and in a moment almost had the table covered, and clean glasses, and all in the French manner, and a mess of potage first, and then a couple of pigeons a la esterve, and then a piece of boeuf-a -la-mode, all exceeding well seasoned, and to our great liking; at least it would have been anywhere else but in this bad street, and in a perriwigg-maker’s house; but to see the pleasant and ready attendance that we had, and all things so desirous to please, and ingenious in the people, did take me mightily.
Well, if it will work anywhere else but in that perriwigg-maker's house on the ugly street in Covent Garden, I trust it will work in mine.
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I looked at several different recipes before I settled on a plan. I had decided to make my roasts on Thursdays, my second-busiest day of the week, in order to force myself to stick only to realistic weeknight roasts. That decision, along with its corollary (only ordinary grocery-store ingredients) helped me narrow down my choices quickly.
- One I thought of using purported to be from Cook's Illustrated, which is reliable, but it seemed a little fiddly for a Thursday.
- Another, from the New York Times, looked beautiful and authentic (it contains a pig's foot and dried porcini mushrooms), and instructs you to salt the beef two days ahead and cook it one day ahead of serving. I did momentarily consider cooking it the night before, which certainly would have simplified dinner on the day-of.
- In the end I chose one that was streamlined, but that looked to have preserved the essence of the dish, and I adapted it slightly, both for our tastes and in order to do much of the prep the night before. This let me add a couple of extra steps, such as salting the meat and letting it rest overnight before cooking, that would tweak the recipe a bit more toward the classic.
If you want to look at a recipe in recipe format, try one of those. Here, I'm just going to blog.
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On Wednesday night, I started with a nearly-three-pound chuck roast ("Select," according to Mark, so not even the best chuck), patted it dry with paper towels, and plopped it onto a piece of plastic wrap.
Then I blended 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg with 1/2 tsp kosher salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper. Tip: to measure nutmeg while you grate it, deposit the same measure of kosher salt into a little pile on the plate, and stop when the nutmeg-pile looks about the same or a little bigger (since it's fluffy).
I rubbed the nutmeg mixture all over the roast, wrapped it up tightly in plastic and a zip-top bag for secondary containment, and chucked it in the fridge.
The next step: fat-rendering and bacon-crisping. In the Dutch oven I started 4 ounces of bacon cooking.
(I like to render bacon submerged in water. It works wonderfully, and is also a good way to make breakfast bacon. Put your bacon in the pan, cover it with about 1/4" of water, and turn up the heat. The water comes to a boil and stays there, while the fat slowly and evenly melts out of the bacon; eventually the water boils away, leaving the fat behind, and the bacon begins to crisp. If not enough fat has come out by the time the water is gone, add a little more.)
While the bacon cooked, I chopped one onion and peeled the slenderest carrots I could find, cutting thicker ones into pieces that matched. I guessed on the quantity of carrots, enough to give everyone in the family a handful. I wrapped the onion and carrots up and stowed them in the fridge. And I used the time to gather other ingredients, like red wine, tomato paste, and beef broth.
Bacon was removed to paper towels, leaving the grease behind.
The bacon was also stored carefully in the refrigerator, after a stern warning to other family members not to touch it. And then I put the lid on the pot, warned people equally (though probably not as necessarily) not to wash it, and left the grease till the next day.
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Thursday in the morning I assembled my ingredients:
After lunch I turned the oven to 300° F. I reheated the bacon fat in the Dutch oven, unwrapped the roast, and tossed it in along with some extra kosher salt. I browned it well, about three minutes per side in a quite-hot pan, and held it on its edge with tongs to brown on the sides for good measure.
Then I removed the roast to a plate, and sautéed the diced onion in the remaining fat until it was golden. Next, two tablespoons of tomato paste; finally, deglazed the pan with 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar and 1 cup red wine (a 2011 Bordeaux that I bought at Jungle Jim's over Christmas, probably at a good price because there is at least one more bottle in my pantry). A cloud of scent: wine, evaporating alcohol, beef, onion, well-smoked bacon, filled the kitchen.
In went the crisped bacon bits, the roast, a couple of sprigs of parsley, a bunch of fresh thyme tied up with one of its own stems, and two bay leaves.
Then I poured in enough beef broth to cover about 3/4 of the roast.
Covered, into the oven it went. This was at 2:25 p.m.
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At 4:30 I added the carrots. I pushed them down under the liquid surface.
The lid went back on for another hour.
(Somewhere during that hour, I put together a spinach salad with blueberries and pine nuts.)
And then it was time to finish the dish.
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Uncovered, it looked like this:
The carrots had acquired that speckled gloss that I associate with the best beef stews.
I moved the roast with tongs and a spoon to a cutting board; this one did not fall completely to pieces, unlike the onion-soup roast. I covered it with foil to rest while I steamed new potatoes (the kind that come in a microwaveable bag) and fiddled with the sauce.
I strained the liquid, and moved the vegetables and bacon to a deep serving dish, discarding the herbs and stray bits left behind in the colander. Then I put the liquid back in the pot and turned up the heat to reduce it by half while I sliced the roast.
This time, the roast remained more or less sliceable. It didn't fall apart like butter or like a school-cafeteria turkey hot shot; it sliced, although it was hard to slice it really thin because it did want to tear. It wasn't tough. I could slice it about three-quarters of an inch thick, and at the very ends it did fall apart into shreds. I arranged it on the platter with the carrots, encircled it with the steamed potatoes, and poured the reduced cooking liquid (not a gravy exactly; it wasn't starch-thickened) over all.
Even though they had already eaten their salads, everyone was so eager to dig into the beef that I failed to scatter parsley and lemon zest atop it for the photograph.
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How was it?
I came back to the table after the others had already started, since I was doing things like turning off the oven and softening butter for the bread (whole-wheat challah bought from the natural-foods co-op up the street), and Mark said to me: "Sit down. Listen. Start… with the carrots."
He held up a forkful of carrots. "This. This is what I think of when I think of roast beef. The onions and the carrots underneath. This."
The carrots were definitely beautiful. Luscious and melting and savory.
"Can you put more carrots in?"
"Yes," I said, "but I'd have to use a smaller roast or more liquid. They have to be submerged."
"Do it."
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Meanwhile, the children (except the four-year-old, who is very into bread and butter) were chowing down, making little grunts of pleasure now and again.
I turned to the beef.
I have to say, the onion-soup beef was more tender than this one; but this one had a more pleasant texture, something that you could chew and savor. And the flavors were fuller, cleaner, and richer. Bacon and red wine and beef, all together, is a beautiful combination. Mark and I drank the remaining Bordeaux with dinner, and it went down very smoothly.
The thin French pan sauce didn't cling like a gravy (of course, if you wanted it to, it would be a simple matter with a little butter and flour or cornstarch), but it sopped up well with a chunk of challah, and everyone cleaned their plates (except for the four-year-old, who had his plate cleaned by others.)
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Would I make this one again? Definitely. It was not quite as foolproof as the onion-soup roast, and a good deal more fiddly, but not too fiddly for a Thursday night, at least not with some prep the night before. And the results were company-quality.
I agree with Mark that more carrots (or some other root vegetable, like parsnips) could only have improved the dish; but I'm pretty sure that I should increase all the sauce-components to keep them submerged: the onion, tomato paste, wine, and broth.
Potatoes are nicer cooked in the broth, too, but really it was a good deal easier to steam them in the microwave and add them at the last minute.
The bread was a must because of the delicious, thin sauce.
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I think next time I am going to try an Italian stracotto with fresh tomatoes and pesto, on top of polenta. For now, while the spring weather is still relatively cool, I'll continue with the slow-oven method; later I will be searching out the best Instant-Pot recipes to avoid heating up the kitchen. Stay tuned.
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