A toast to roast: A bite of these roasts brings back yesteryear in a rush
The Sunday roast-beef dinner — it was a family tradition at countless American homes. Served up around 2 o'clock with all the Grandma and Mom fixings: layered Jell-O salads, sweet and dill pickles, pitted black olives (so fun to stick on the ends of your fingers!), celery and carrot sticks, and sometimes even delicious, home-canned, pickled crab apples (in no way like those hideous red canned ones!), green-bean or broccoli-cheddar casserole, mashed potatoes with plenty of toasty pan-drippin' gravy, warm butterflake rolls, and, surely, homemade pie for dessert.
However, this is my roast memory: well done, crispy exterior, a big sauceboat of yummy pan gravy. Nope, we didn't eat rare meat at our house.
Of course, being a chef I have come to "know better," I guess, and eat my meat nice and medium rare ... and tender. But those old taste memories pop back, and I really do still like the rich flavor of slow-cooked, well-done braised meats. Tender, flavorful pot roasts — yum!
Now, that's not to say I don't love a great, well-seasoned and seared porterhouse steak or thin slices of rare roasted beef with a shallot mushroom demi. But today, my recipes will have you experimenting a bit with your meats.
Take, for instance, Roast Pork with Rosemary Apples & Onions. Wow! This is some flavorful dish! My husband, John, goes crazy for it, nodding approval while fitting in compliments between mouthfuls, as he relishes every bite and sops up every dribble of juice with his bread. A super winter dish, especially when served with roasted or steamed red potatoes and some nice root veggies.
Roasted and slow-cooked meats call out to be served with big glasses of red wine. I am always on the lookout for wines that are super-sippable and also reasonable. So, after lots of roast-testing and wine-drinking with friends, a couple of wines truly stood out in the "affordable delish" category.
One is Lindemans Padthaway Shiraz 1998 — around $10.99 at Larry's, Safeway, QFC, Albertson's and other retailers. That is a bargain! If you haven't yet quaffed a shiraz, get busy. They are delicious and are the up-and-coming varietal.
On the cabernet front, we also loved Seven Peaks Cabernet Sauvignon 1999, which is available at Safeway, QFC, specialty grocers and boutique wine shops for about $12.99.
For a great slow-cooked roast-beef dinner, I like to take a piece of chuck, season it well and sear it on all sides in a big dutch oven. Then I add some onions and chopped mushrooms, and half a bottle of red wine along with some fresh thyme and 20 peeled garlic cloves. I cover the pot and let the meat cook slowly for several hours in the oven. Uncover and — wow! — it's Sunday Slow-Cooked Roast Beef with Half a Bottle of Wine and a Cup of Garlic.
Can you say de-lish! The thickened pan juices make the tastiest roast-beef gravy you'll ever drizzle over mashed spuds.
OK, we've covered the slow-cooking pork butt and beef chuck. Now, let's move on to quicker-cooking roasts. We'll do one of each this way.
Roast Pork Loin with Fennel Spice Rub is wonderfully tender and juicy. When its pan juices and drippings are stirred with sour cream, this roast is great served up with roasted fennel and potatoes.
In restaurants, the crispy, salty, fatty outside pieces that fall off when cutting a prime rib are called "Scoobie snacks" and are coveted and fought over by cooks!
Of course few of us are roasting those huge cuts of beef in a home oven, except on holidays or for large dinner parties.
So, that brings us to my Roasted Beef Tenderloin for a Crowd (excellent for a Christmas gathering).
I like to rub the meat with a tasty mixture of horseradish, grainy mustard, kosher salt, coarse-ground black pepper, garlic, thyme and olive oil. All of the rub ingredients go into the food processor to make a paste. Then dry your roast well and smear this all over it. Place the roast on a roasting rack, pop into a preheated oven, and roast away!
Use a meat thermometer to cook it to the doneness you like. When you remove the roast from the oven, remember to let it "rest" for about 10-15 minutes before you start carving it — otherwise, all the juices will run out.
Slice that baby up and serve with dollops of horseradish cream, gooey scalloped potatoes and a nice, big glass of red wine.
It's just meat and potatoes — but it's still darned good!
Chef Kathy Casey is a national food, beverage and restaurant-concept consultant and free-lance food writer. She is the owner of Kathy Casey Food Studios in Seattle. E-mail: info@kathycasey.com. Her "Dishing" column appears the first Wednesday of the month in the Seattle Times Food section.