The One 'True' Meal

I grew up from a very particular family. Things are done a certain way for a certain reason and rarely did we vary from it. In fact, some things became so 'traditional' that it would take on almost a religious overtone. Sunday dinners being one of these things, it just wasn't Sunday if there wasn't a pot roast, accompanied by Yorkshire pudding and gravy. My brother, Joseph, LOVED roast beef. I wonder if in part it was due to the fact it was one of the few meals we had that wasn't Chinese and it was a serious breach of protocol if we varied from it. Inevitably there would be leftovers of pot roast that would be sufficient to make up the roast beef sandwiches for everyone for the week. These, in and of themselves became a joke among my friends as everyday they'd compare and swap lunches and they turn to me and say, "Soooo .... let me guess ... roast beef?!" I just got in touch with an old friend of mine through Facebook and the first thing she said to me was, "Do you remember how you ALWAYS ate roast beef sandwiches?" How could I not!

So it is no surprise that once I left home for college I shied as far as possible from this traditional meal. It's only been recently that I've begun to cook it for my personal pleasure. The crock pot has been great for pot roasts, but I always wondered about oven roasts. I'm too cheap to buy a good cut but was worried I'd see my family take a chainsaw to cutting it up. But after thorough research I found this recipe online and tried it today. (http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/roast_beef/) It was amazing! So much better than pot roasts in flavor, cooks over 3-4 hour period (for all those crazy LDS and their 3 hour church meetings!) it's easy and uses cheaper cuts of beef. Can I ask for more?!

Roast Beef Recipe
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Ingredients
3 to 3 1/2 lbs of Boneless Rump Roast (pick a end cut with a lot of fat marbling)
Olive oil
8 slivers of garlic
Salt and pepper
You will need a meat thermometer

For the gravy:

Red wine, water, and or beef stock
corn starch
Method
1 Start with the roast at room temperature (remove from refrigerator 1 hour before cooking - keep it wrapped). Preheat the oven to 375°F.

2 With a sharp knife make 8 small incisions around the roast. Place a sliver of garlic into each incision. Take a tablespoon or so of olive oil and spread all around the roast. Sprinkle around the roast with salt and pepper. Place the roast directly on an oven rack, fatty side up, with a drip pan on a rack beneath the roasting rack. This arrangement creates convection in the oven so that you do not need to turn the roast. The roast is placed fat side up so that as the fat melts it will bathe the entire roast in its juices.

3 Brown the roast at 375°F for half an hour. Lower the heat to 225°F. The roast should take somewhere from 2 to 3 hours additionally to cook. When the roast just starts to drip its juices and it is brown on the outside, check the temperature with a meat thermometer. Pull the roast from the oven when the inside temperature of the roast is 135° to 140°F. Let the roast rest for at least 15 minutes, tented in aluminum foil to keep warm, before carving to serve.

Serves 4-6.

To make the gravy:
Remove the dripping pan from the oven and place on the stove top at medium heat. Note that if you are pulling the roast out early, for rare or a medium rare level of doneness, you may not have a lot of drippings. Hopefully you will have some. If not, you may want to leave the roast in a little longer at even lower heat, 175°F, to ease some more drippings out of it. Add some water, red wine, or beef stock to the drippings to deglaze (loosen the drippings from the pan). Dissolve a tablespoon of cornstarch in a little water and add to the drip pan. Stir quickly while the gravy thickens to avoid lumping. You can add a little butter if there is not a lot of fat in the drippings. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mom adds some fresh thyme too if she has some. (See also How to Make Gravy.)

So perhaps I'll have to change my tone about this very traditional Sunday meal. Just as long as I'm not left eating it day in and day out until the next week!

The All American Dessert

So I've always been intimidated with making pies. I see in my mind the tender crust that breaks off in little flakes as a fork cuts through ... something like in a commercial when they play it in slow motion so as to really get saliva pooling in the corners of your mouth. That picture would be my goal. but I was afraid that the reality would be my husband sawing at it with a steak knife!

I cornered myself though when I ordered a 30 lbs box of peaches from Utah. While we love peaches, there was no way that Kent, Isaac and I could eat 30 lbs before they went bad. I didn't want to make jam since all that sugar tends to mask the real flavor of the fruit and I simply didn't have the energy to can it all. When Lorna Sears mentioned having froze enough of them in peach pies that they ate it all year, I decided to take the leap.

Lorna, being the genius that she is, brought up the idea of freezing the filling such that when I got around to making the crust, I could just pop it in. It was perfect, especially for me when I have kids to worry about too. I froze the fillings for the pies on 2 different days and opted to try out the crust once before making it for all of them. It was divine!!! And now I can say, "I CAN DO IT!!!", flaky crusts and all! ;0)


PIE CRUST (makes one 2-crust pie)

2-1/2 c. flour
1 c. shortening
1/2 tsp salt

Mix together until it forms large crumbs. ( I use my electric mixer for this part since I'm basically lazy and it works.)

Combine, then add to flour mixture, stirring lightly with a fork:
1 beaten egg
1/4 c. water
1 Tbs. vinegar

Mix lightly and roll out. Avoid any excess handling. For best results, do not reuse the trimmings.


PEACH-RASPBERRY PIE

4 lb. (about 8 large peaches), peeled and cut into 3/4" slices
1/2 c. fresh raspberries
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. flour
2 Tbs. butter, cut into pieces

Combine peaches, raspberries, sugar and flour; turn into bottom crust. Dot top with butter. Roll out remaining dough. If peaches are very juicy, sprinkle fruit mixture with 1 more tablespoon of flour. Place top crust
and crimp edges. Sprinkle top lightly with sugar. Bake 350 for about an hour until golden and juices are leaking out. (Bake on a cookie sheet.) This bakes just fine from frozen.


Here's the filling, lined with wax paper and sealed in a ziploc bag.



And here is the finished masterpiece ... well not really, it's not as esthetically pleasing as one would like, but I had barely 15 mins to make it before I had to feed some cranky children! ;0)

Hmm,Hmm Good!

I just have so say - I'm so proud of myself!!!! I had a bit of free time and after visiting Wendy and Steve in Arizona, I had to try her bread recipe. Now I've done alot of breads but have always been hesitant of wheat breads. They always seemed to turn out crumbly and dry, but Wendy had made incredible bread for us, so I had hope. In addition, I had a wheat grinder I had yet to use, so I dug it out of storage and when all was said and done, this was the result:



Fresh bread, nutty and moist at only a fraction of the cost. Tomorrow I'm making a Tarragon Chicken Salad to go with it! Hmmm, hmmmm. :0) Here's the recipe:
Wheat Bread

1 C warm water
4 T yeast
1/4 t sugar
Stir and let these sit to rise in a small bowl

In mixer add:

4 C warm water
1 1/2 C sugar
3/4 C oil
1 C grain cereal (ex. - 9 grain mix - very grainy)
Let soak 5 - 10 minutes in mixer. Then add yeast mixture. Then add the following:

2 1/2 T salt
12 C whole wheat flour
2 C white flour
(you can vary the ratio of whole wheat to white)

Knead dough until gluten forms. Approximately 15 minutes with a bread mixer. Place dough in a large greased bowl and cover with oiled saran wrap. Place dough to rise in the oven with the light on. The heat from the light is enough to help it rise. Let rise until double. Place into greased bread pans. I usually make 4 large loaves. Let rise until double. Bake in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. The higher temp for a shorter period of time seems to produce a more moist loaf of bread.