Red Wine Pot Roast

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."

~Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

 

We are shut away as the weather turns cold, our doors and windows fast against the chill, closing out the world around us we so enjoy when the weather is more pleasant. Yet it is not without advantage. Closing homes against Jack Frost means also that they fill with the sights, sounds, and smells of domesticity to greet us when we escape from the bitter weather. There is nothing quite as comforting as coming home to warmth and the smells of cooking.

One of my favorite cold-weather dishes is pot roast. It is simple and straightforward. Hearty. And you cook this one with wine.

The smell of this cooking is certain to raise spirits and increase appetites. 

Red Wine Pot Roast

3 pounds boneless beef chuck roast

2 Tbs olive oil

½ cup water

½ cup red wine

1 tsp whole pepper corns

2 tsp salt

1 bulb of garlic, each clove peeled and sliced lengthwise

1 onion, sliced

6 medium potatoes, washed and cut into 2-inch pieces

3 large carrots, peeled, halved, and cut into 2-inch lengths

6 celery stalks, cut into 2-inch lengths

Preheat an oven to 350º F.

Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in an oven-proof Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid. Brown the roast on all sides and remove from the heat.

With a sharp, thin knife - I use a fillet knife - make small cuts on the surface of the roast and insert the garlic cloves.

Pour in the water and wine. Sprinkle the roast with the salt and pepper corns. Arrange the onion slices on and around the roast.

Cover the Dutch oven and bake in the preheated oven for 2 hours.

While the roast is cooking  prepare the potatoes, carrots, and celery.

After 2 hours, add the potatoes, carrots, and celery. Check the moisture of the roast and add some additional water if it looks dry. Continue baking covered for another hour.

The roast is best served au jus, which just means you use the remaining liquid from the Dutch oven as a kind of light gravy over the meat. If the liquid is sparse after removing the meat, just add a little more red wine and heat it in the Dutch oven over a medium heat.

Enjoy!

Baked Pumpkin Buttermilk Doughnuts

"Don't miss the doughnut by looking through the hole."
~ Anonymous

Let's get this out of the way right now. This is a post about toroidal ring doughnuts (Bet you didn't know that's the technical term for the common hole-in-the-middle doughnut, did you? Neither did I.) and not filled doughnuts. And these toroidal ring doughnuts are baked, not fried. So you'll need a doughnut pan to make them.

According to sources (read: the Internet) the pedigree of doughnuts is hotly disputed. Doughnuts were either invented by Dutch settlers in the 19th century - who also gave us cookies and apple pie and, one assumes, the infamous red velvet fudge cake served at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the $250 cookies from Mrs. Fields circa 1980, and perhaps the the similarly priced Neiman Marcus chocolate cookies that your mother's sister's best friend was duped into buying by a pleasantly smiling waitress in 1994 - or by an American sailor by the name of Hanson Gregory in 1847 who, being a know-it-all 16-year old, felt that his mother's cooking was too greasy and never quite done enough in the middle and so took it upon himself to better her olykoeks.

Gregory was of Dutch stock so the Dutch still get a certain fame regardless of which version you choose to believe. 

Interestingly enough, doughnuts first get a mention in culinary literature in 1803 in an English Volume which included doughnuts in an appendix of American recipes. As this was a good 44 years before Hanson claimed to have bettered his mother's under-cooked olykoeks and 28 years before he was even born, one has to wonder if the American sailor was just full of it.

However they came to be, doughnuts were and are a popular treat. And as fall freezes into winter anything I can add pumpkin to is welcome. These doughnuts are wonderfully light and rich and the buttermilk and pumpkin give them a real feel of fall.

Baked Pumpkin Buttermilk Donuts

1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla

Sugar Coating
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 Tbs cinnamon
8 Tbs butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Combine all the dry ingredients except the brown sugar in a medium bowl. Mix well.

In another bowl, combine all of the wet ingredients plus the brown sugar. Whisk together until smooth.

Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet using a spoon. You do not want to over-mix.

Spoon the batter into a greased doughnut pan, filling just shy of the top as the doughnuts will rise quite a bit.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the thick portion of the doughnut comes out clean.

Remove the doughnuts from the pan and let them cool on a cooling rack while you prepare the sugar coating.

Melt the butter completely. Pour the butter into a small, flat-bottomed bowl or dish. In another flat-bottomed bowl, mix together the granulated sugar and cinnamon.

Take a doughnut and dip it face-down into the melted butter. You want to coat the top and sides with butter. Immediately put it in the sugar coating mixture, making certain you get all the butter covered with the sugar.

Put the doughnut back on the cooling rack, face-up, and repeat with the remaining doughnuts.

Best enjoyed warm!

Makes about 10 standard sized doughnuts.