Roast beef and sausage with root vegetables and yorkies

Ok, so if you haven’t caught on, the yorkies in question are puddings rather than the dogs of the same nickname. We’ve used this roast method before, and I am always pleased with the results.

Ingredients
Roast:
2.5 bottom round roast
1 lb rope-style German sausage
4 carrots peeled and cut in half
1 lg onion, quartered
4 stalks of celery
5-6 white or red skinned potatoes (we peeled these, but you certainly don’t have to)
Herbs (we used thyme, sage, parsley and some of the krakow nights seasoning from Penzey’s)
Salt and pepper
3 cups stock (we used the homemade brodo di carne we made the week before-awesome stuff)

Method
Brown the roast in a roasting pan on the stovetop before cooking. Cut the celery in to about 4 inch pieces, and make a kind of raft for the roast to sit on in the pan. Coil the sausage around the roast, and scatter the cleaned veggies in the pan. Pour in the stock, and then put, covered, in a 350 degree oven. Our roast cooked for about 2.5-3 hours, but your mileage may vary.

When the roast was done, we removed the meats and veggie, and I stole some drippings for the yorkies while Chris worked on the gravy (and what a tasty gravy it was). We just used Emeril’s yorkshire pudding recipe, and they turned out pretty well. They were really amazing with the gravy (much better than mashed potatoes, in my opinion).

All in all, a really nice cold weather meal that I think will be making a spectacular return during the winter months.

Dal Makhani

Recently, I’ve been wanting to experiment more with lentils, so Chris and I decided to try the recipe at this site. We followed the method, but made a few changes on the spices. We left out the fennel seeds, as I’m not a huge fan of the flavor, and also left out the hing because we couldn’t find any. We used about 2 tomatoes worth of diced, and a good teaspoon of tomato paste as well, and we replaced half the cream with yogurt. We also only soaked the lentils for about 1 hour before cooking, and the beans got an even shorter version of the quick soak on the package. The end result was a really nice, thick and creamy lentil dish, not hot, but pleasantly spiced. We served it with naan and rice, although in the future, I think we’ll just do naan.