Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [186]
3. Choose a pot with a tight-fitting lid just large enough to accommodate the meat later. Put in 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, the butter, and the onion, turn on the heat to medium, and cook the onion until it becomes colored a pale gold. Add the carrot and celery. Stir thoroughly to coat well, cook for 4 to 5 minutes, then put in the browned meat.
4. Pour the wine into the skillet in which the meat was browned, turn on the heat to medium high, and allow the wine to bubble briskly for a minute or less, while scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen cooking residues stuck to the bottom and sides. Add the contents of the skillet to the pot with the meat.
5. Add the homemade broth or diluted canned broth to the pot. It should come two-thirds of the way up the sides of the meat, but if it doesn’t, add more homemade broth or water. Add 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. If it is not simmering, turn up the oven thermostat. On occasion it may happen that all the liquid in the pot has evaporated or been absorbed before the meat is done. If this should occur, add 3 to 4 tablespoons of water. Cook until the meat feels very tender when prodded with a fork.
6. Remove the meat to a cutting board. If the liquid in the pot should be too thin and it has not been reduced to less than ⅔ cup, put the pot on a burner, turn the heat on to high, and boil down the juices, while scraping up any cooking residues stuck to the pot. Taste the juices and correct for salt and pepper. Slice the meat, put the slices on a warm platter, arranging them so they overlap slightly, pour the pot juices over them, and serve at once.
Pot Roast of Beef Braised in Amarone Wine
AMARONE is Verona’s unique and great red wine. It is made from grapes that, after they are harvested, have been put aside to shrivel for 3 or 4 months before they are crushed. Their concentrated juice produces a dry wine of intense flavor, splendid as an accompaniment to meat dishes of substance, sumptuous to sip on its own at the end of a meal, and extraordinary as the braising liquid for a pot roast of beef. No other wine delivers comparable taste sensations. It should not be difficult to find in any shop that stocks good Italian wine, but should you be compelled to make a substitution, look for any unfortified, fine, dry red wine with an alcohol content of at least 14 percent.
For 4 to 6 servings
2 tablespoons chopped pancetta
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 pounds beef chuck
¾ cup onion chopped very fine
½ cup celery chopped fine
2 garlic cloves, lightly mashed and peeled
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1¾ cups Amarone wine (see introductory note above)
1. Choose a heavy-bottomed pot with a tight-fitting lid just large enough to accommodate the meat later. Put in the chopped pancetta and the olive oil, turn the heat on to medium high, and cook the pancetta for about 1 minute, stirring it once or twice. Put in the meat, turn it to brown it well all over, then remove it from the pot.
2. Add the chopped onion to the pot and cook it, stirring it once or twice, until it becomes colored a pale gold.
3. Return the meat to the pot, adding the celery, garlic, salt, liberal grindings of pepper, and ½ cup of the Amarone. Cover the pot, keeping the lid slightly askew, and turn the heat down to minimum. Cook for 3 hours over very slow heat. Turn the meat from time to time and add the rest of the Amarone, a little bit at a time. If, before the 3 hours are up, all the wine in the pot has evaporated, add 2 or 3 tablespoons of water, as needed, to keep the roast from sticking. The meat is fully cooked if it feels extremely