Roast Beef

Sun. Jan. 21 -
Barbara's mother was (to tell the truth) a terrible cook, but she could make a mean roast beef. We followed her method, which was basically the same as that in new Joy. Get a three-pound bottom round roast, dust it with salt and pepper (she used garlic powder too), and throw it in a 450-degree oven for ten minutes. Then reduce the heat to around 300 degrees and let it cook a little more than an hour, until the interior temperature reaches 135 - Holt used his new probe thermometer, which is still a fun toy as well as a good kitchen tool. Tent the roast under aluminum foil and let it rest for ten minutes, while you deglaze the pan with red wine for a sauce, and steam a quick vegetable; ours was a basket of tiny yellow patty-pan squashes from Madison's at Findlay market, a welcome forecast of spring, or of someone's greenhouse, on a day when we hadn't gone out at all except to shovel snow. Slice the roast as thin as humanly possible and serve in a puddle of sauce, or as the Department of Redundancy Department puts it, "au jus gravy."