One of my New Year’s resolutions was to update this blog more often, or at all. Another one of my New Year’s resolutions was to carry through on at least ONE of my New Year’s Resolutions sometime around New Year’s itself.
Oh well, Happy Chinese New Year, and here we go. I am going to update this sucker every day, or at least more than once a week. We have all sorts of new Buying Club and CSA members who I am sure will be happy to see I am typing my thoughts on food rather than cashing their checks or ordering seeds so that there is something in their baskets come June.
But here is the thought I was having about food yesterday: There are a lot of roasts in a cow. There is a lot of hamburger too (and only a teeeeeny bit of good stuff like filet and flank stead), but I can easily think of things to do with hamburger (like, say, make hamburgers). The roasts mostly need braising -- which would be fine if I didn’t live with Nick who won’t eat anything that can be described as “stew.”
So that leaves me with pot roasts that don’t fall off the bone or involve mushy potatoes or carrots (the latter, Viv’s demand).
Last night I tried a version of this unstewy, uncarroty braised meat dish sent to me by CSA member Mike Davis. I used a top blade chuck roast, though I imagine this could work on the tougher pieces of meat (it better, because we are out of top blade and the cow we had hoped to take to the butcher this month just isn’t the right size yet). I also got to use some oranges and fresh tomatoes I picked up on the way home from Florida last week. And this was the perfect dish for my very favorite big ol’ (yes, that is the official size) cast iron pot with a lid.
Brown the roast on both sides in some olive oil in the big ol’ pot on top of the stove. Remove the meat from the pan. Add to the hot and brown crunchy oil a couple rough chopped onions, maybe 3-8 (I like 8) whole, peeled garlic cloves, and a whole cinnamon stick. Cooks those until the onions are translucent, 5-10 minutes.
Turn off the heat, add a couple of peeled and halved oranges and a large rough cut tomato. Pour 2-4 cups of homemade chicken or turkey stock (I had stock going on the stove from turkey the day before, so yay me!). Salt and pepper to taste, and braise (covered with the big ol’ lid) in a preheated 300 degree oven for 3-4 hours (Mike used 275 degrees, but I was running behind and needed it to be done more in the 3 hour range).
When it’s done braising, remove the meat and keep it warm. Throw out the cinnamon stick and as much as the orange as you can recover (mine mostly disintegrated). Puree the remaining muck and boil it down to about 2-3 cups for sauce. Mike serves it over egg noodles – I used rice. It was great.
The picture above is of the meat right before it went in the oven. There was supposed to be a fabulous “here it is done” picture but we ate it too quickly – which I guess is a good thing.
Kate
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