(Okay, I know you are all going to wonder at the way I cut roast, but it is the way my mother did it and I grew up with it this way so to me this is normal. I like to eat the long thin pieces.)
The recipes for the Cooking Italy group this past week were Pot Roast of Beef Braised in Red Wine, found on page 393-394 and Mashed Potatoes with Milk and Parmesan Cheese, Bolognese Style, found on page 518 of the cookbook we are using: Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.
Guys here love a pot roast. Guys here love mashed potatoes. I can easily go with the flow on both, so today found me making these recipes knowing that the guys were going to appreciate a favorite dinner this evening.
The pot roast recipe uses beef chuck roast, onions, carrot, celery, red wine, beef broth, roma tomatoes (canned), thyme, marjoram, salt & pepper. The roast is browned and then cooked in the oven for 3 hours, pretty much like my standard roast recipe. One new technique, however, was that she had us turning the roast every 20 minutes during the cooking time (my usual recipe just has the roast unattended in the oven for that amount of time with no fussing with it at all), which turned out a very nice incredibly tender melt-in-your-mouth piece of meat with no dry spots, etc. It was delicious. In fact it was the best roast I have ever eaten.
The potatoes were easy enough to prepare (potatoes, milk, butter, parmigiano reggiano, nutmeg, salt) and will be a new go-to fairly regularly here as the additional flavor of the Parmesan cheese and a little freshly grated nutmeg is lovely. We enjoyed both of these recipes.
If you would like more information on the Cooking Italy group, want to see the menus and schedules, and want to see fabulous food and photos, visit Angela's site here.