Roast!

Here is an email I just got from my friend Ben.

Re: Roast.......

Well, going to Parkside put me in the mood for meat (don't laugh)....Anyway, I found this recipe for beef braised with onions at epicurious.com. It was ridiculously simple:

I bought a 4 lb chuck roast, and cut it in half so that each piece of meat was about 2 * inches thick ...I rubbed the meat with a mixture of 1 tsp allspice, * teaspoon cinnamon, a healthy dose of fresh nutmeg, 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper... apparently in French this mixture is called "quatre epices" it said to add cloves, but I didn't have ground cloves. Anyway, then I sliced 2 lbs of onions into rings and chopped 6 cloves of garlic. I placed half of the onions and garlic in the bottom of my cast iron pan and placed the meat on top, then topped it with the remaining onions and garlic. I then covered the pan with several layers of foil (this is the secret..if the steam escapes there will be no juice and it will burn) and baked it at 400 for about an hour. After an hour I turned over the meat and baked it for 1 * hours. When I took the meat out of the oven, it was very tender, and there was a lot of gravy....which was just the juices from the meat and the onions as there was no other liquid!. I then sliced the roast and let it sit in the juice........and it tasted pretty damn good. I think next time I will add some prunes. You could serve it with potatoes, or you could make a vegetable tagine and serve it with couscous ( and play around with the spices....) Or, you could shred the meat and add some tomato to the sauce and serve it with papardelle.

You can see how focused I am on my work here....

Anyway, that's the story of the roast.