Sunday Dinner Series Part III: Where's the Beef?

Blah blah work married life busy blah.  Back to the food in general, and the Sunday Dinner Series in particular!

Unseasonably warm weather aside, it's still winter here in Manitoba.  For me, that means finding the heartiest food possible and tucking in.  Warming from the inside out, if you will.  I can only fathom how the voyageurs survived the cold season all those years ago... though I'm pretty sure pot roast (or something like it) would've come into play.

He Ho!

"Roast beef dinner" is definitely a Honeybee family tradition.  In recent years, however, I've come to realize that while it does involve roasted beef, it doesn't necessarily fit most people's idea of "roast beef".  This is really more a pot roast, with lots and lots of veggies.

I had been perusing my new favourite cooking tome, and found not one, but TWO recipes for "perfect pot roast" (don't ask me how that works... how can they BOTH be perfect?  Meh).  At first, I thought I would follow the recipe exactly, especially since there was never really a recipe for Mom's roast.  But about halfway through, her voice started creeping into my head.  "What, no onion soup mix?  Are you really only going to use a half cup of wine?  What do you mean, no roasted carrots on the side?!"  Telepathic-mom was absolutely right.  What was I doing??  Why mess with what I know I like??  So, I started ignoring the book (Hubs would be proud) and started doing my own thing.  I've done it again since the first "hybrid recipe" attempt, with good results.  If you want to try it out for yourself, have a look here:

Lil's Sunday Pot Roast

Sort of adapted from The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV
Show Cookbook... for the first bit, at least.

Serves four, with leftovers

• 1 boneless beef roast (like a chuck-eye roast), about 3-5 lb*
• ~2 Tbsp canola oil
• Salt & pepper
• 1 small white onion, chopped medium
• 2 ribs celery, chopped medium
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped medium
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 bottle of red wine (some for cooking, some for drinking... so pick a decent one!)
• 1/2 package onion soup mix
• 1 large red onion, peeled, trimmed and cut into large chunks
• 4-6 red potatoes (depending on size), scrubbed and cut into large chunks
• 1 head of garlic, peeled
• 3-4 carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks
• 1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into large chunks
• Cornstarch (for gravy thickening)

*I didn't realize that I bought a bone-in roast.  So, at about 8 am on a Sunday, I gave myself a crash-course in deboning.  It was messy.  Hence the butcher twine... better now!  My apologies to any vegetarian readers... but in all honesty, having to deal with that aspect of food prep made me consider a plant-based diet myself!

1. Preheat the oven to 300ºF.
2. In a Dutch oven or other oven-safe pot, heat the oil over high heat until shimmering.
3. Prep your roast.  If it's a sort of large ungainly piece of meat, use butcher's twine to tie it up into a nice uniform loaf shape.  Using paper towels, pat it dry.  Season liberally with salt and pepper.
4. Sear the roast on all sides in the hot pot (I like using my Le Creuset for this, since it can also go in the oven.  Less dishes, yay!)  Once well browned on all sides, remove the roast to a plate.  Turn the heat down to medium.
5. Toss the white onion, celery, and medium-chopped carrot into the roast pot.  Cook until the veggies soften and start to brown.  Add the garlic and sugar; cook and stir for about 30 seconds until fragrant.  Add the thyme.
6. Pour in a generous amount of red wine to deglaze; be sure to scrape up all the delicious brown bits on the bottom of the pot (I honestly just free-pour.  It's probably about a cup to a cup and a half of wine that I use.  FLAVOUR.)
7. Add the roast (and any juices it's leaked) back to the pot.  Sprinkle the 1/2 package of onion soup mix over it.  Add enough water to the pot to bring the liquid halfway up the roast.
8. Bring the roast + liquid up to a simmer.  Fit the lid tightly over the roast (I usually put a sheet of foil in there for a good seal).  Put in the oven.
9. Bake for 2-2 1/2 hours, turning the roast over every 1/2 hour.
10. At the 2-2 1/2 hour mark, add the veggies (potato, sweet potato, whole garlic cloves, red onion).  If things look a bit dry, add more wine.
11. Bake for another hour or so, until the veggies and meat are fully tender (poke them with a fork- if the fork slides in and out easily, you're golden).
12. Take the roast out and let it sit on a carving board, tented under the foil you used earlier, until you're done the gravy.
13. With a slotted spoon, remove all the veggies from the pot to a serving bowl.  Try to leave behind as much juice as possible.
14. If there are still a lot of "chunks" in the gravy, take an immersion blender and whiz it up a bit.  On the stovetop, put the pot on medium heat and simmer the gravy down until it thickens and reduces somewhat.  Scoop out some of the hot proto-gravy with a ladle into a mug.  Add a tablespoon or so of cornstarch and whisk well.  Add back to the whole pot of gravy (this is how you can avoid getting lumps).  Repeat until desired consistency of gravy is reached!
15. Carve your roast.  I'm not going to lie, I can never get nice "slices" like my Dad does.  So we just sort of end up with large tender meat chunks.  Nobody complains.
16. Serve the roasted veg and beef with the gravy.  A loaf of fresh bread is especially nice here, to spread the roasted whole garlic cloves on like butter.  BUTTER, I tell you.

Starting the sear.

Almost done searing... look at all that brown-bit flavour on the bottom!

The bowl of delicious vegetables, pre-cooking.  Looks so pretty with all those vibrant colours...

Meat chunks!

Roast veg.  Not the prettiest bowl, but oh man, the flavours in here are not to be believed.

Dinner with Hubs (he's wearing his 'Polar bear in a snowstorm' Winnipeg shirt!).  Observe the fresh-baked bread, with roasted garlic clove spread.  It's a whole delicious meal, in one pot!  Make sure you get that red wine on the table, too.

So overall, the pot roast doesn't look like anything special.  It's certainly not haute cuisine.  Presentation's not great.  But let me tell you, this was the ONLY way to finish off a day of skating on the trails at The Forks.  It was also a great dinner to share with Deb, which gave me an excuse to attempt challah for the first time (more on that another day!)

Digging through the archives and continuing to cook (and photograph) up a storm,
-Honeybee

Sunday Dinner Series Part II: Not My Nonna's Gnocchi

Try saying that ten times fast!

A few weeks ago, I decided to make good on a promise I'd made Deb.  She very graciously agreed to look after our kitties in the summer while we were back in Ontario gettin' hitched... despite her pet hair allergies (uh-oh).  I honestly don't remember how we got on the topic of sweet potato gnocchi, but we did, and Deb said she wanted to try it.  So as a (belated) thank-you for watching the quadrupedal fur children, I started Googling my way to a decent-looking recipe.

I succeeded in my search.

Now, I've made gnocchi before.  Many times.  But I was VERY wary as to how this version (courtesy of, unsurprisingly, Allrecipes.com) would turn out.  My mother and I share a similar stumbling block when it comes to these "little knees" (yes, that's what gnocchi means if translated literally).  Soft, sticky dough is the bane of our existence.  It's a balancing act: add too little flour and the dough becomes nigh impossible to handle and roll into the eponymous shape.  Add too much, and you end up nomming on leaden, tough dumplings once cooked.  Not good eats, either way.  I figured, with the difference in texture and moisture content between regular potatoes and the sweet variety, I could be in for a troubling time.

Pretty, fall-appropriate little orange darlings.

I was correct in my prediction, to a point.  After seeing all the caramelized, sugary juices that resulted from roasting my (massive!) sweet potato, I wondered if I might be able to get away with just a little more flour than the recipe called for.  Chilling the dough a bit also helped.  In the end, they were nice and tender, with a very distinct sweet potato colour and flavour.  I decided to dress them with a white wine butter sauce that I modified from the interwebs.  I also tossed the hot noodles and sauce with baby spinach leaves, that just wilted into the whole dish (read: I was too lazy to make a salad, so I tried to get veg in another way).  Add some shredded romano cheese, and the result was, as RR would say, "Yum-o".  Even better the next day as lunch leftovers, let me tell ya... though my coworkers were wondering what on earth I was eating.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi Florentino with White Wine Sauce

Adapted from here and here.  I love Google!

Serves four generously... we were definitely hungry!

Gnocchi:

• 2 average-sized sweet potatoes (half a pound or 8 oz.  I weighed the massive one I had in the pantry, and it was close enough)
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced or put through a garlic press
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg (don't skip this, it really adds something!)
• 1 egg
• 2 to 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour (Nonna typically uses cake flour for hers, but I think AP is best here)
• 1 bag (~170 g or 6 oz) pre-washed baby spinach
• Shredded romano, parmesan, or asiago cheese

Sauce:

• 5 Tbsp (just over 1/4 cup) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 of a small onion, minced
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp chopped fresh parsley (I used my freeze-dried stuff with no ill effects)
• 1/4 tsp dried basil
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1 3/4 cup chicken broth (not gonna lie, I only had OXO bouillon packets on hand...)
• 1/2 cup white wine

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake sweet potatoes for 30 minutes, or until soft to the touch. Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool.
2. Once the potatoes are cool enough to work with, remove the peels.  Mash them, or press them through a ricer into a large bowl. Blend in the garlic, salt, nutmeg, and egg. 
3. Mix in the flour a little at a time until you have a soft dough. Use more or less flour as needed.  It should be only a TINY bit sticky.
4. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. 
5. While you wait for the water, make the gnocchi. On a floured surface, roll the dough out to about 1 cm or ~1/2 inch thickness.  Cut strips of dough about 1 cm or ~1/2 inch wide.  Lightly flour the cut sides of the strips.  Now cut the strips into cubes, again about 1 cm or ~1/2 inch wide.  You don't have to be precise.
6. Roll the cubes of dough along the tines of a dinner fork, pressing with your index and middle finger to create an indent.  If this makes no sense to you at all, try watching this:
    
   
   
   Alternatively, you can just put the unrolled cubes into the water... but I'll be disappointed.
7. Drop the gnocchi into the boiling water, and allow them to cook until they float to the surface. Remove the floating pieces with a slotted spoon, and keep warm in a large serving bowl.  Toss the hot noodles with the fresh spinach, covering the bowl with a lid or plate to trap the heat and wilt the leaves.
8. For the sauce, heat 1 Tbsp of butter in a medium saucepan over medium high heat.  Add the minced onion, parsley, basil, and thyme. Stir frequently and cook for about 1 minute. Add the salt and white pepper and stir.
9. Add the white wine and bring to a boil; turn the heat down to a simmer and reduce the liquid by half.
10. Add the chicken stock and again bring to a boil, turning down the heat once the boiling point is reached and reducing the liquid by half.  This should take about 7-10 minutes.
11. Add the remaining 4 Tbsp butter a few pieces at a time, while constantly whisking the sauce to thoroughly incorporate the butter.  Check for seasoning.
12. Immediately toss the sauce with the gnocchi in the serving bowl.  Top with a generous sprinkling of cheese.
13. Enjoy hot with some white wine and good friends!

Not the greatest pictures, but I was too hungry to perfect a shot!!

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how these turned out, and I'll definitely be making them again.  Maybe, if I pluck up enough courage, I'll make them for Nonna and see what she thinks!

Off to put the finishing touches on THIS Sunday's dinner,

-Honeybee