Comfort Food: Home Style Pot Roast

I love chuck and arm roasts since they come from the most used muscles on a cow. Remember the equation:

• heavily used muscles = tougher meat = more flavor = cheaper cut
• less used muscles = more tender meat = less flavor = expensive cut

Home Style Pot Roast

Ingredients:
3 yellow onions
grass fed beef chuck roast, about 2 1/2 lb.
3/4 tsp. kosher salt, plus more, to taste
1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper, plus more, to taste
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 Tbs. rendered bacon fat or olive oil
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp. sweet paprika, preferably Hungarian or Spanish
1 1/2 cups beef stock or broth
1 1/2 cups canned plum tomatoes, drained and chopped
2 Tbs. chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, plus more for garnish

Directions:
Halve the onions through the stem and cut the halves into 1/2-inch-thick half-moons. Set aside.

Season the chuck roast with the 3/4 tsp. salt and the 1/2 tsp. pepper. Spread the flour on a plate. Coat the roast with the flour, shaking off the excess.

In a Dutch oven over medium-high heat, warm 2 Tbs. of the bacon fat. Add the roast and cook, turning occasionally, until browned on both sides, about 5 minutes total. Transfer to a plate.

Add the remaining 1 Tbs. bacon fat to the pot and heat over medium-high heat. Add the onions, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions soften, about 6 minutes. Stir in the garlic and paprika and cook until the garlic is fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the stock, tomatoes and the 2 Tbs. parsley. Return the beef to the pot, nestling it in the onions. Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until the beef is fork-tender, about 2 hours.

Transfer the pot roast to a deep serving platter. Season the onion mixture with salt and pepper. Skim off any fat from the surface. Spoon the onion mixture around the roast and garnish with parsley. Serve immediately. Serves 4 to 6.

To make beef paprikash, simply add sour cream to the sauce: Transfer the pot roast to a platter and skim the fat from the sauce as directed. Stir 1 cup sour cream into the sauce and cook just until it is heated through; do not allow it to boil. Season with salt and pepper. Pot roast also makes excellent hot sandwiches. Slice the roast and serve it along with plenty of the saucy onions on crusty rolls.

Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Comfort Food, by Rick Rodgers (Oxmoor House, 2009)

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News from the Cows

The girls are trying to work their way back up in production but this is bad time to try. With the winter coming on and the grass gone, everything in nature says to cut back. We have found some wonderful hay from a farmer in Kentucky (Brayden is so pleased with it that he drives to Franklin, KY once a week to pick it up) and the girls really seem to be doing well on it. The production has increased slightly but we have hopes for more as the babies start to come.

Spinning Yarns: Fiber Arts for the Fall

As the temperatures drop our sheep look more and more in their element. The winter is a happy, happy time for the sheep. They work all year to grow a great fleece and it comes in mighty handy as the temperatures dip. I am looking forward to a great fleece harvest next year as I spin up the final wraps of last year's fleeces. The cooler weather keeps me inside spinning and knitting; it just seems like the right natural rhythm.

When people learn that I spin and knit the wool from our own farm they seem shocked that spinning wheels are still available for purchase. Thankfully the art of spinning, weaving and knitting are on the upsurge. My theory is that as our societies grow more chaotic, our hearts and souls search for things that are timeless, repetitious and quiet. Fiber Arts certainly fit the bill. I can't count how many time my children fell asleep to the whirl of my wheel and no matter how ADD a child is, they stand almost breathless and completely amazed watching the wheel spin, and spin.

This winter we will have yarn from our own sheep as well as hand dyed yarns from several talented artists from Tennessee for sale at the Franklin Farmers Market. We have a wide range of fleece products available from raw fleeces for spinners to hand spun yarns for those who prefer knitting and crocheting.

"Plenty - Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet"

If you're determined to eat locally, you might enjoy Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon. The couple embarked on an experiment to spend a year eating only what they could grow, gather, or purchase from a 100 mile radius around their home in Canada.

I found the memoir interesting and thought-provoking in parts, although at times the authors' tones were a bit strident for my taste and I could have stood less gratuitous profanity. However, if you're attempting to eat locally yourself, especially from an urban environment, this book may be helpful to you.

If you only have time for one local eating memoir, we would more highly recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but if you're a fan of this genre and have the time, you might also enjoy "Plenty."

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"The Cook and the Gardener"

Although set in the French Countryside, Amanda Hesser's book The Cook and the Gardener holds many lessons and much encouragement for Americans seeking to tie their living more closely to the land. Over the year she served as a cook in a chateau in Burgundy, Hesser developed a friendship with the chateau's gardener and documented the garden and its impact on her cooking throughout the months. I enjoyed the descriptions of what was happening on the land during each month and also the interesting descriptions of heirloom foods and how to cook them. In each section, Hesser covers one month, with additional chapters devoted to the seasons in general, and includes many recipes and shorter essays on particular foods and how to select and prepare them. The recipes are adapted for American cooks, and Hesser notes, where possible, how to find and select the foods she mentions from American sources.

The book's emphasis on cooking with fresh in season foods, preserving for the colder months, and adapting the kitchen to the rhythyms of the seasons makes this a great read for those who would like to incorporate more local seasonal foods into their diets, but also invites the reader to consider the passing of seasons in our own backyard gardens and homes.

It is difficult to say if this book is a cookbook that also includes interesting reading, or if it is a memoir/treatise that also includes recipes. Either way I think you'd find something to interest you and I'd recommend it.

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Angel, our beautiful Great Pyrenees, is pregnant. She seems to be about 35-40 days into the pregnancy and we are so excited about the coming puppies. Many of the puppies are already spoken for and that helps us to plan for puppy sales. We will train several of the pups to guard chickens from an early age. Most likely Angel will whelp in the barn with the chickens so that the puppies will come to think of the chickens as litter mates. We’ll have some great picture ops once that takes place. We are guessing that she will have between 6 and 10 pups. For those of you who have been, or are pregnant through sweltering summer weather here is a picture you can appreciate!

If you're interested in one of Angel's puppies, please let us know!

"Good to the Grain"

If you enjoy baking with whole grains and enjoying fresh seasonal food like we do, you will love Kim Boyce's excellent cookbook Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours. Boyce is a trained pastry chef with experience at famous restaurants like Spago and Campanile, but her recipes are accessible for the average cook and I guarantee you will be inspired by what you find in this book.

The book covers flours including whole wheat, amaranth, barley, buckwheat, corn, kamut, oat, quinoa, rye, spelt, and teff. I appreciated how Boyce explained the characteristics of each flour and how to use it without getting a dense or tough product. I've been frustrated in my past efforts to translate white flour recipes to whole grain, but Boyce takes the guess work out of it.

If nothing else, you'll certainly enjoy the beautiful food photography in this book and the author's reflection on different grains. I love books that make it easier to eat healthy, beautiful and delicious food, and this book certainly advances those three goals.

If you decide to read the book and try any of the recipes, please let us know! You can get a variety of whole grains (including, at the time of this writing, white wheat, kamut, oat groats, and spelt) as well as various natural sweeteners and baking needs at the Farm Shop. Happy baking!

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