Month: January 2004

It may come as a surprise to loyal readers that I have never, in fact, made a roast beef. Last week, however, I spied a nice roasting pan on sale at Canadian Tire, and visions of roasted animal parts played joyfully before my eyes, so I bought it. The next step was to procure a chunk of beef, which I did, shamefully, courtesy of the local Provigo supermarket. (In future, roasts will come from the Maison du Rôti on Ave. Mont-Royal, or at least from a respectable butcher.)

The roast was a small inside round, about 1 KG (a little more than two pounds), wrapped — as this cut often is — in a thin layer of pork fat on the sides and bottom.

I began by pounding a few spoonfuls of black peppercorns between two sheets of wax paper, using the back of a cleaver. When the peppercorns were suitably cracked, I added a few pinches of oregano. Then I brushed some grapeseed oil onto the roast and rolled it around in the cracked pepper/oregano mix. I placed it on the roasting rack, added some water to the pan, and popped it into a
500° F oven. Yes, you read that right — 500° F (260° C).

After a mere 20 minutes, I took it out of the oven, lowered the heat to 275° F, and let it roast slow and low for about another hour. In the meantime, I was roasting beets, mashing potatoes, and steaming asparagus. I also popped open and decanted a nice red Bordeaux.

When the roast came out of the oven, I made an onion and mushroom sauce from the drippings, using onions that had roasted with the beef, some butter-sautéed mushrooms, a splash of wine, and a sprig of fresh thyme. In retrospect, the sauce was a bit much for the beef, which would have been better served simply au jus, but it was lovely over the mashed potatoes. (A nice sauce for a steak, more so than a roast.)

It was a bit more rare than I would have expected for that much time in the oven, but since M and I both like some pink in our meat we had no complaints. In fact, it was peppery and delicious!