Pick up your Meat Share: Archway Farm: starting Friday, January 5th, open daily 9a - 7p
Dear Shareholders:
We are getting back into things after a busy, and soggy, holiday week. We continue to have a fair amount of beef in this months shares (for those that made that selection). We are scheduled to cut a lot more pork over the next month, so I anticipate that will shift back for the next couple shares.
Mark (for Wyatt, Maggie, Dima, Leo, & Alona)
Special Items in This Months Shares
(depending on size and meats you selected)
Beef Roast: we’ve included a variety of different beef roasts in the shares, but they all do well with low and slow cooking. I’ve included a classic Marcella Hazan recipe below for inspiration.
Sweet Italian Sausage: bulk version of our standard sausage. Goes well with pasta, pizza, soups, etc.
Boneless Chicken Thighs: from Normanton Farms in Litchfield. Typically we’ve left the thighs bone in, but we had a small batch that are boneless.
Recipe of the Month
Pot Roast of Beef Braised in Red Wine
Recipe adapted from Marcella Hazan’s amazing book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
INGREDIENTS
- Vegetable oil
- 4 lbs boneless beef roast
- 1 tbs butter
- 3 tbs onion, finely chopped (about 1/2 of a medium sized onion)
- 3 tbs carrot, finely chopped (about 1 medium sized carrot)
- 1 1/2 cups dry red wine
- 1 cup beef broth
- 1 1/2 tbs chopped, canned tomatoes
- A pinch of dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp fresh marjoram or an 1/8 tsp dried
- Salt
- Black pepper, fresh ground
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Put just enough vegetable oil in a large skillet to coat the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat on to high and when the oil starts to shimmer, put in the roast. Brown it well on all sides, then transfer to a platter and set aside. Set aside your skillet without cleaning it out for use later.
- In a separate pot with a tight-fitting lid, large enough to accommodate the meat, put 2 tbs of vegetable oil, the butter and the onion and cook on medium until the onion becomes a pale gold color. Add the carrot and celery. Stir thoroughly to coat well, and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, then add the browned meat back into the pan.
- Pour the wine into the skillet that you’d used to sear the roast, turn on the heat to medium high, and allow the wine to bubble briskly for a minute while scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen cooking residues stuck to the pan. Add the contents of the skillet to the pot with the meat.
- Add the beef broth. It should come up two-thirds of the way up the sides of the meat, and if it doesn’t add more broth or water. Add in the tomatoes, thyme, marjoram, salt, and several grindings of pepper. Turn the heat on to high, bring the contents of the pot to a boil, then cover the pot and put it on the middle rack of the preheated oven. Cook for about 3 hours, turning the meat every 20 minutes or so, basting it with the liquid in the pot, which should be cooking at a slow, steady simmer. All the liquid may evaporate before the roast is done. If that happens, add 3 or 4 tablespoons of water. Cook until the meat feels very tender when prodded with a fork (about 3 hours.)
- Remove the meat to a cutting board. If the liquid in the pot is too thin and hasn’t reduced to less than 2/3 cup, put the pot on the stove on high heat and boil down, while scraping the cooking residues stuck to the pot. Taste the juices and correct for salt and pepper. Slice the meat against the grain, put the slices on a warm platter, arranging them so they overlap slightly, pour the pot juices over them and serve immediately.