Author Archives: Jenna

Balsamic Pot Roast with Blueberries and Thyme

I threatened to make this dish in this post, and make it I did, using up one of the two gigantic arm roasts from my grandfather that had been occupying valuable freezer space for far too long. And was it ever good! I give all credit to the creator of the recipe over at The Noshery, because it never would have occurred to me to add blueberries to a pot roast. They give the final dish a fun kind of tang that complemented the already rich and savory flavors that always come with roasting meat for hours and hours. I have also never tasted such delicious onions. Some heavenly chemistry involving the balsamic vinegar happened, and the onions are both melt-in-your-mouth and chock full of flavor. Chock! Full! And the carrots . . . ooooh! Oh. *fanning self* OK.

I won’t talk about the amazingness of the mushrooms at all, because I might start crying. Plus, you’ve heard me rave about mushrooms far too often by now.

With some (but not many) variations on the original, here it is. Your fall experience won’t be complete without a good pot roast, so you might as well make this one since it will fulfill your taste buds’ every dream and longing.

Ingredients

(Serves 7-8)

1-3 lb  to 4 lb roast (chuck roast or arm roast)

1/2 c flour, optional

1/4 c Olive oil, divided

2 large onions

5 large carrots

6 oz baby portobello mushrooms

10 cloves garlic

1/2 c balsamic vinegar

3/4 c beef broth

1/3 c wine (I used sweet white wine)

16 oz tomato sauce

2 c fresh blueberries

Salt and pepper, to taste

3 TBS fresh thyme leaves plus 3 sprigs to garnish

First, preheat the oven to 275 degrees.

Quarter the onions, chop each carrot into 4-5 pieces, smash the garlic cloves (I leave them whole) and remove the skin, and thickly slice the mushrooms. I like to use nice, meaty mushrooms for this:

Pull the thyme leaves off of their stems:

Heat some of the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium high heat. When it’s hot, add the onions and carrots. Sprinkle them with some salt and pepper–you know you want to. And does anyone else adore licking some freshly ground pepper straight out of your palm?

Huh. I could have sworn I wasn’t alone there . . .

Cook them for 6-7 minutes, until they’re nicely browned, and then take them out and set them aside in a bowl.

OK, those weren’t as ‘nicely browned’ as they could have been–but I was huuungry! And dinner was still hours and hours away!

Add a little more olive oil to the pot. Still on medium high heat, add the mushrooms and garlic . . .

. . . and fry 4-5 minutes until golden.

Remove them as well. Try not to eat every single one–it would make your life a wonderful and perfect place in the moment, but it would also really detract from the final dish. Choose the delayed gratification route! Abstinence always! It’s the more mature option.

OK, and sneak a little bite in, too–I mean, what’s the fun in complete mushroom self denial?

Sprinkle generous amounts of salt and pepper all over the roast. This is optional, but you can also give it a light coating of white flour, which will later help to thicken the sauce into something more like a gravy. Add the rest of the olive oil to the pot, and when it’s heated, add the roast.

Sear on all sides so that it’s a dark brown color all over. This should take about 8-10 minutes.

Remove the roast to a plate or bowl.

With the burner still on medium high, add the vinegar, wine, and broth. You can totally use red wine here–that was my first instinct. You know–red meat, red wine. However, all I had was some sweet white wine left over from making Pasta Fresca, and that was also delicious, so don’t be a discriminator. You can’t go wrong with wine when it comes to a roast. I love all the colors!

Stir and bring to a rapid simmer, scraping the bottom to collect all the brown bits that add flavor to the sauce. Add the tomato sauce:

Add the blueberries . . .

. . . and the thyme leaves, too. I love pictures of things falling into pots.

Cook this little concotion for a couple minutes longer.

Add the roast back into the pot, submerging it in the sauce. Add in all the veggies as well.

Stir them around to envelope them in the sauce.

Now cover the pot, and put it in the oven for 3-4 hours. I cooked my 3 lb roast for at least 4 hours and it was perfect. I’ve heard that you should do about an hour per pound of meat . . . is that right, Oh Experienced Cooks? (Mom?)

Those of you who read about my arm roast dilemma know that at this point, a second roast was also going into the oven:

Oh, the terrible and wonderful bounty.

But let’s get back to the dish that has brought us all together here today. Here’s what it looks like when it first comes out:

Your job is to stick a fork in there, pull the meat to the surface, and see if it’s done. You can do that by pulling it gently apart with two forks. If it comes apart easily, it’s dinner time, baby.

If not, slap her back into the oven for another hour while shouting “Now don’t you come back out until you’re done, you hear me?” That usually puts some sense into that pot roast. Plus it shows it who’s boss around here. Once it’s done, you can remove the meat to a platter for easy serving (the pieces of fat usually detach themselves and are easy to spot, fish out, and throw away). Just make sure to pour plentiful juice all over the meat as you serve it.

The onions are TO DIE FOR. Seriously, these onions need to be on the forefront of your thoughts as you walk away from this post.

The meat is so tender that there is no need for a knife at all. 

Serve over rice, noodles, or potatoes. Please forgive me for the slight blurriness in the below pictures. And please–don’t punish the roast for my personal and photographic failures! Make the roast! Love the roast!

Click here for printer-friendly version: Balsamic Pot Roast with Blueberries and Thyme

Playing with shutter speed

Shutter speed is the length of time a camera’s shutter is open–essentially, how fast it goes “click” when you press the button to take the picture. Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second, so 1/10 is actually a pretty long and slow shutter speed, whereas 1/400 is very short and quick. On a practical level, the faster the shutter speed, the more “frozen” the action you capture–in the picture above, the droplets of water and the shadows they cast on my arm and face are frozen in place. Slowing down the shutter speed will mean motion in your pictures has a “blur” to it, which can be frustrating when you want a crisp image, but great when you play with it in the right way and are able to capture a sense of movement.

If you have a camera that allows you to manually set your shutter speed, I’d like to encourage you to play with it. My camera (Nikon D5000) has a setting called “S”, which stands for “Shutter priority.” I can dial the shutter speed up, or dial it down with the little rotator thingy. By using this setting, the camera will automatically adjust the aperture for you so that you don’t have to worry about any other settings and can simply focus on setting your desired shutter speed.

“Rotator thingy.” Don’t you love how precise I am?

Here are some fun examples of what can happen with different shutter speeds.

FAST SHUTTER SPEED (1/250 or faster)

A fast shutter speed will freeze your subject, like this picture of my friend Vessie I posted a couple weeks ago.

My friend Vessie took these shots of me when we were swimming/sunbathing at Pony Pasture in Richmond.

Please ignore the dorky expression on my face in the picture above–the point is the frozen arc of water.

And no, in case you’re wondering, the sunbathing didn’t do any good. I am still as white as bleached flour, though I may have gained an extra freckle or two. And a couple pounds from all the snacks we brought–yeah, that too.

It’s also fun to use a fast shutter speed to freeze pets in motion, like my sister Erica’s cat Teds. The shutter speed wasn’t quite fast enough, so it’s not as crisp as I would want it, but you get the point.

Children in motion are always a favorite–you can capture the most bizarre, hilarious expressions. This is my friend Eve’s son. This picture just makes me laugh.

SLOW SHUTTER SPEED (1/30 or slower)

Here is another Vessie-flipping-her-hair picture, but with a slower shutter speed. Unlike the one I posted above, this one captures the motion of her head.

I also used a very slow shutter speed (1/2 second up to 5 or 6 seconds long) for some camp fire pictures at Family Vacay 2010, up in the North woods of Wisconsin.

As you can see, the camera has captured the motion of the people, but also the motion of the embers floating upwards–we can see the whole trail they follow.

Don’t the trails of light kind of look like party streamers?

You can use this same technique to capture moving traffic at night so that your final picture shows trails of light instead of individual vehicles.

I should note at this point that when your shutter speed is very slow (especially 1/30 or longer), any movement of the camera will result in a blurry picture, so make sure you have a tripod or tripod substitue. I have a tiny tabletop tripod that’s about the height of my hand. I love that thing, mainly because it’s so small and folds up so nicely that I can slip it into my purse. In fact, I always carry it with me. You never know when you’ll be going about your regular business and suddenly need to capture an image with a slow shutter speed–you gotta be ready in this crazy world, I’m telling you. But no need to dash out and purchase a tripod–you can also simply set your camera on a chair or table, and use books or magazines to prop it up at the right angle so that it can capture the frame you want.

You can also use changes in shutter speed to portray water differently. Here is a picture with fast shutter speed (1/400).

See how the water is “frozen” in action?

However, by slowing down the shutter speed to 1/2 second or even multiple seconds, you can achieve that ethereal, smooth water effect that many photographers like to play with (click here for an example). I had full intentions of giving you an example from my own camera . . . but there’s a piece to this that I couldn’t figure out. With my shutter speed set so slow and in the bright daytime sun, my camera was “absorbing” too much light. I set my ISO (essentially, the sensitivity of the camera to light) as low as possible. I made sure my aperture was as small as possible (f22)–but with a shutter speed of even 1/5 of a second, there was still so much dang light that every picture I took was simply bright white. Any more experienced photographers know how to fix that problem?

Anyway, go forth into the world and play with your camera settings! I am by no means an expert, but if I can encourage any one person to switch out of “automatic” and start using their camera to a fuller potential, I will have achieved my mission here.

For tomorrow, the roast recipe I promised you last week. In the meantime, cheerio!