For nostalgia buffs, Sunday wouldn’t be Sunday without a proper pot roast. Once the roast was in the oven, families could head off to church or the golf course and come home several hours later and still the meat would be cooking. An option was the stove-top version, which resulted in a slightly less-gray pot roast that still made the whole house smell good.
One of the reasons pot roast remains in the American culinary repertoire (or at least, on Mom’s old grease-stained recipe cards) is that it is imminently adaptable. No celery? Use onion. No homemade stock? Campbell’s sells it by the can.
Nowadays, fewer people seem to be going in for the five-hours-in-the-oven approach; the ingredients are apt to be more refined – for instance, decent red wine instead of bouillon and ketchup – and, in some cases, the cut of beef a notch above.
The weather at this time of year is well suited to slow-cooked dishes, when having the oven on for two or three hours at a stretch is not a bad thing.
The following recipe comes from the Fig Café & Wine Bar in Glen Ellen, where it appears regularly on the menu these days. Note that it isn’t necessary to cook with the same wine you pour at the table. Fig proprietor Sondra Bernstein recommends cooking the roast with a syrah and serving it with a particular zinfandel, Gamba Zinfandel, Moratto Vineyard, Russian River Valley.
The roast goes well with mashed potatoes and can be accompanied by any number of side dishes, including your favorite roasted vegetables.
The Fig Café & Wine Bar Pot Roast
Ingredients
4 pounds beef roast, butcher-tied
2 tablespoons canola oil
3 onions, quartered
3 carrots, medium diced
3 stalks of celery, medium diced
1 head of fennel, diced
1 whole head of garlic, top cut off
2 tablespoons flour
½ bunch of thyme
1 sprig rosemary
2 bay leaves
5 whole black peppercorns
1 star anise
2 whole cloves
1 tablespoon Worchester sauce
1 bottle red wine, preferably full-bodied syrah
1 quart veal stock
Preparation
Preheat oven to 325 Fahrenheit.
Season the meat liberally with salt. Sear the meat in a large hot pot with canola oil. Sear on all sides, getting good color on meat. Remove from pan. In the same pot, add onions, carrots, and celery, and sauté until vegetables are golden. Add the garlic, flour and spices, stirring well to remove any browned bits from bottom of pan. Add the red wine and Worchester sauce. Reduce a bit and continue stirring everything to make sure it’s well incorporated. Add veal stock and bring to a simmer. Return meat to pot, and cover loosely.
Cook in the oven for 2½ hours or until a knife inserted into the meat pulls out without resistance. Let the meat rest, strain the sauce onto the pot roast, discarding the vegetables.
