(The gravy is unusual looking, I'll admit, but tasty...)
Sometimes, I just like to make dishes up. Okay, I do it a lot, actually.
Part of what I love about cooking, other than the eating (of course), is starting a dish without a clear idea of how it's going to end. Having a clear idea of what you're making is naturally more efficient, and there's a certain comfort to knowing that you're going to have predictable results. This is particularly true when you've got company coming over.
There was none of that involved with last night's dinner, so why not 'take the gloves off' and make it up?
I had a loose objective in mind- A hearty dinner, with enough beef left over for lunch sandwiches. I had picked up a 'pot roast' of sorts at the market, which was actually a round steak curled under itself and tied to give it thickness. Normally, I wouldn't attempt to cook something like this to medium rare, because this cut can have a lot of connective tissue, but I like rare roast beef in sandwiches, so I thought I would go for it, knowing that I can always throw it back in the oven if I needed to. So I decided on a fairly low oven, 325º convection bake, and fired it up.
Okay, with the objective in mind I looked at what I had on hand-- 5 carrots, a large sweet onion, chicken stock, some crimini mushrooms and some canned Hatch green chiles. Check. I rubbed the beef well with our Survival Spice™ barbecue rub, along with some extra kosher salt, and placed it on top of the peeled carrots in a Le Creuset baking dish. Nice heavy bottom, no scorching. In it went for about an hour and 45 minutes. About 45 minutes in, I decided to thick slice the onion and place it around the dish, kind of on edge so it didn't touch the beef. I also added about a half inch of water and some chicken stock, making sure it didn't rise above the carrots.
Nothing unusual here, so far, but this is when the wheels starting turning. I guess I was just going to make a pan sauce, and serve the carrots and onion slices whole, but then I started thinking about osso bucco, and the sauces I've made for that. I had a lot more carrot than I needed, but I decided to sweat the mushrooms in some oil and butter, and buzz up all of the carrots and onion to provide thickening.
So, while the beef was resting after I pulled it at 130º or so, I grabbed my immersion blender and spent some time pureeing the carrots and onion, which took a while. On medium heat, I added more chicken stock and started reducing it. Tasted it.
Hmmm, needs more, um... zip, I thought. I grabbed some cans of diced green Hatch chiles from the pantry and added those. Seasoned, tasted. Hmmmm, again, needs more twang and the color's a bit orange, really, I added the meat juices from the resting beef and grabbed some good balsamic vinegar. Now we're getting somewhere, the balsamic really brought it together. I added the cooked criminis and let it all hang out for another 10 minutes, and plated it up. I plated it with the beef exposed, sauce around it first, but it looked and tasted much better smothered.
Man, it was good. The beef was pleasantly tender, with only a few areas that made I wish I'd cooked it longer. The gravy, while a bit unusual looking, did its job admirably, and complemented the beef really, really well.
Try things! Experiment!! Always taste as you go, and adjust as necessary. Make a mistake? Order pizza and learn from it.
Very Interesting!! All the ingredients are my favorites. The color is very unique. I wondered about you using canned Hatch Chile. I would think you would have acess to fresh. Cook on Bro!
We do, Chile, but it's harvest time now, I think.
I always keep the canned ones in the pantry for situations like this. They weren't in the original plan for the day, but that's part of the fun.