Yankee Delights

9.2.13 Note - Due to mishaps in the blogosphere many pictures were deleted from this blog.  I've done my best to add them back in but, unfortunately, the ones for this post pre-date my laptop.  Please imagine everything to be perfectly mouthwatering - Jessie

Last Sunday I decided to make a super-tradish Sunday dinner for me and my peeps.  I made a beef roast and some awesome biscuits with peach crisp for dessert!  Very typical Leave it to Beaver dinner.

I like my roast to be almost steak-like when it's carved.  This is not the way I remember my mom's or my grandma's; the stringy, sometimes dry, covered in delicious gravy, awesome on a piece of white bread with ketchup roasts of my youth.  This is how my peeps recall their roast fondly as well.  So I had to do my best to not fancy anything up.  It took great restraint, but I feel I succeeded.

I chopped up some russet potatoes and fresh Thyme (I had to put a little something fancy in there!) as well as some white onions and mixed them with some baby carrots.  Then I greased up my roasting pan with a little vegetable oil and tossed all my veg in and rolled 'em around to get coated.  I shook my Johnny's Seasoning Salt all over the place, like ya do.  (For anyone who uses Johnny's, I find it's always best to get it from the regular grocery store, not Costco.  The bulk sizes they put in Costco don't have the MSG and that MSG is what makes that dependable, consistent Johnny's flavor.  And if you're one of those people who's all CRAZY about MSG, and you don't have a confirmed sensitivity to it, , perhaps you need to do a little more research on the matter.)

I took my roast, around 3 or 4 pounds of beef rump, and seared it off in a hot pan on all sides in some leftover sausage fat.  Just like grandma used to make, no?

I used a packet of McCormick Slow Cookers Savory Pot Roast seasoning for the first time ever, putting blind faith in the fact that the gravy on the front of the packet looked like my mom's.  Then I covered the whole thing super tight with about 8,000 (actually 5) layers of foil to do my best to simulate a dutch oven. 

Sidenote: I need a dutch oven.  My birthday is coming up.  I want the Le Creuset 9 quart enameled cast iron French Oven in Sonoma Green which you can only find at Williams Sonoma.  It's only a million dollars.

Once my roast was nearing its finish I whipped up some biscuits.  My method to making awesome biscuits is one part my mom, one part my mother in law, one part America's Test Kitchen and the rest Better Homes & Gardens cookbook under Biscuits Supreme.  My own contribution is using evaporated milk instead of regular milk.

I make by dough and dump it out onto a floured surface before it fully comes together.  Then I knead and fold, knead and fold until it's fully combined.  When I roll out the dough I fold it in half twice before each roll so there are lots of layers when I cut out my biscuits.  Then when I use my cutter I push straight down and do one half turn.  I pick them up and put them on my ungreased baking sheet and LEAVE THEM ALONE.  When I put them in the oven they're little disks about a quarter to a half an inch high.  The come out around two inches high and are awesome.

The roast came out delicious and stringy, slightly dry on the ends and paired well with plain ol' ketchup.

The 'tatoes and carrots were soft but not mushy after 3 hours in the oven and the onions were sweet and practically melted.  And everything was knee-deep in gravy.

Our dessert was a super-simple peach crisp.  I make crisp topping probably once or twice a year; it's basically flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and baking powder or something along those lines.  I keep it in a gallon sized Ziploc with the instructions on the front: "Mix one cup with one stick of butter.  Dump it over fruit.  Cook at 375 until done."

The fruit I chose were a couple cans of sliced peaches that have been neglected in the cupboard for million years.  I drained them and tossed them in a buttered pan with a couple teaspoons of vanilla, a shake of cinnamon and a tablespoon of brown sugar, squished everything up a little and let that sit for about an hour.  Once it was a fragrant, juicy mess, I dumped my crisp mix over them and cooked it until it looked golden and delicious.  And it was when topped with some vanilla ice cream.

A nice homey Sunday dinner for a cold late-winter evening.  And leftovers for a week!  Although, I must admit, as good and traditional and nostalgic as it was, I still can't wait for the farmer's markets to start up.  I need some non-root vegetables!