A Beef Pot Roast to Warm the Soul

With Potatoes and Salsa Verde for the Ages!

Take your garden variety polar vortex, spice it up with some extra-low atmospheric pressure, sprinkle it with a storm named Grayson, and you are left with the horrifying Frankenstein "bomb cyclone" my African arse has had to endure over the course of the past ten days. It has been utterly miserable: laying waste to dreams of healthier living in the new year, outdoor exercise, and all that. There has been nothing to do but hide under blankets, order groceries online, and drink copious amounts of whisky.

There is at least one god... and s/he is a beef pot roast with taters and salsa verde

That was until I remembered my pot roasts of yore (!!!). There is nothing quite like a good pot roast to fortify the constitution and warm a cyclone-bombed soul. Executing it again, however, would require the hoodwinking of my stoically vegetarian wife, and the location of precious pot roast notes shouted down a crackling trans-Atlantic line by THE CHEF, and dutifully - if hastily - typed by frost-bitten fingers in the depths of Boston's 2010 winter of graduate school discontent.

The first challenge was fairly easy to overcome. The wife fell into the carefully laid trap of a "Golden Globes party", allowing me to convene a small group of carnivores under the pretense of watching Hollywood self-indulgence. She would prepare a Ribollita, and I would conjure the wild winter spirits to incite a riot of warming, fabulous flavors. Ye Olde Eight Hour Beef Pot Roast with Spuds and Salsa Verde would be upon us... and all the world would be made beautiful, and wonderful, and good.

The notes proved more difficult to locate. In vain, I tried WhatsApp-ing THE CHEF. I even tried to raise THE CHEF's WIFE, to no avail. No doubt they were watching cricket at Newlands, or burning their African arses on a Cape Town beach, picking their noses, and posting pictures of summer sunsets to social media. All to piss me off in my frozen hour of need. 

Eventually, after holding upside down, and shaking each recipe book in turn - thank god! - the sticky, wine-soaked rag alighted. We were good to go!

VESTIGES - SOME PEOPLE SAY IT'S LIKE THE TURIN SHROUD

Having put on my thermal long-johns still warm from the dryer, multiple hoodies, hats and my snow-jacket, I hobbled down the deserted hill to Whole Foods. Irritatingly, I had failed to compute that said supermarket would be totally over-run by starving Grayson refugees, like me, executing desperate Sunday dashes for critical supplies. It was hell, and I nearly self-combusted beneath my layers in the labyrinthine check-out line. But clutching a 3 pound bag of onions, 2.5 pounds of beef chuck, and assorted herbs of the field, I emerged victorious, and just in time... for the pot roast requires six to eight hours cooking time, with a strong preference for eight. Get in!

There is a long, and spectacular, story that accompanies this dish. Sadly, it is always delivered by THE CHEF in the wee, wine-soaked hours; rendering its recollection - at least for me - as little more than a warm fuzzy feeling. The splendid tale involves heroic barge-drivers ferrying goods from the hinterland to the sea. At dawn their calloused hands brown beef and chop onions. A pot is left to roast at the mouth of the roaring barge engine as the crew pull down their berets and steam onward to the coast. Having fulfilled their duties as canal-men, our heroes embark to the port market to procure anchovies and herbs, reconvening at the barge to chop aromatics, sling premium olive oil, and discuss the latest developments in the Socialist International. In poor light, our blue-collared protagonists settle in for a beef pot roast with tatties and luminous lashings of salsa verde, singing songs of joy...

Ingredients:

Le Boeuf

2.5 pounds of beef chuck (the interwebs will convert imperial to metric, if you will it)

3 pounds of onion

Salt and Pepper

(YES THAT IS ALL)

Salsa Verde 

Mint (one handful)

Basil (two handfuls)

Italian Parsley (two-ish large handfuls ;-))

Garlic (two cloves)

Capers (one handful)

A tablespoon of red wine vinegar

A tin of anchovies packed in olive oil

Your finest olive oil

Tatties

Potatoes

H2O

Large pinches of salt (two [2])

Execution:

This is super-easy. And very, very goddamned impressive. People will speak of you in hushed tones.

You will need a dutch oven.

As per THE CHEF's instructions, you need "onions shit load" (aka, 'a shit load of onions'), cut into half moons, equal to, or exceeding, the weight of the meat. Having tailed, skinned and half-mooned my bag of onions, the three-pound-haul was approximately equivalent to 2.5 pounds of meat. Ahoy!

Set the oven to 300'F (at approximately hour four, I reduced this to 250'F as per a belated WhatsApp message from THE CHEF's WIFE [who is also a chef, obviously]).

Heat your dutch oven on the stove top to a high heat. Add a couple of table spoons of oil and brown the beef in batches, generously dousing each batch with copious amounts of salt and pepper. Don't be prudent here: this is the only seasoning the meat will have for hours. Give it a good lash!

In light of the high heat, be sure to have a wooden spoon at hand to prod and move the meat around the pan, more or less continually, so as to avoid burning the centerpiece of the dish. Move each browned batch to a bowl. 

Rest, and let the dutch oven cool a little bit (it will cook in the oven at a lower heat than what was used to brown the meat).

Now lob all of the sliced onions into the base of the dutch oven. Add a little olive oil, and then cover the onion with all of the browned chuck.

Foil the dutch oven, attempting - as best one can - to seal in the veritable riot of flavor you are about to unleash. Now cover the foil with the lid of the dutch oven, just to be sure.

Place the dutch oven into the center of your oven and WALK AWAY. Get back under your blankie... do anything. But whatever you do, DO NOT OPEN YOUR POT. 

Trust THE CHEF. Let it be.

At hour 6 or so, make your salsa verde. Having previously used a recipe culled from the New York Times, I thought I would consult some higher powers in my cookery library. Ultimately, I settled on a recipe by Rachel Roddy (I am a big fan). In so far as salsa verde recipes go, this one is pretty straight forward, containing no egg, gherkins, or other counter intuitive ingredients. I opted for the first time to do it by hand and not in the food processor, and was very pleased that I did so.

You will need a mixing bowl.

Chop as finely as you can (a mezzaluna will be handy, if you have one) the herbs, and toss them into the mixing bowl. 

Roughly chop the capers and drained anchovies, and mix them in with the herbs. Small dice (as miniscule as your fingers, and knife will allow) the garlic, and add it to the swelling concoction. 

Mix, mix, mix in the vinegar (some people don't use it, but I'm a fan of sour). Now slowly add your premium olive oil, all the while stirring (with a fork, or a small whisk) the salsa, until you have a nicely viscous and spectacularly verdant looking sauce. Taste it (it should send pangs of pleasure down the back of your neck); add salt and black pepper to taste.

At hour 7.5, peel some potatoes, cut them into quarters, cover them with cold water and bring the pot to a boil on the stove. The tatties should be almost done after approximately 10 minutes (almost done, being the point here). Drain the spuds, and set them aside.

Now remove the wonderful pot from the oven. Remove the lid and foil. The roast should look - and smell - pretty freaking good. Using two forks, shred the meat and what's left of the onions as best you can. Gently, mix in the potatoes - preserving the integrity of the spuds - and return the pot to the cooling oven to rewarm the tatties.

When you are ready, gather your guests with fabulous tales of the awesomeness to come. Be theatrical with The Big Reveal. The masses are likely to think very highly of your expertise, particularly if your have been attentive and plied them with a couple of drinks. 

On serving, be sure to insist that your guests liberally douse their beef with the salsa verde. Complex science informs the flavor bomb that occurs with the marriage of anchovy and beef. Lashing the meat with salsa verde is, needless to say, critical to the task of elevating this meal from the mere sublime, to the sensually divine.

Oh, enjoy!

A video of highlights of the wonder of my particular preparation of this dish is over on my Instagram page.