Roast Beast

Even A Prison Cell Can Use A Little Martha Flair 

Every year for the last ten or so we have hosted our adopted, "chosen" Dallas family to a swell Christmas dinner.  By swell I don't mean your traditional Roasted Turkey and Giblet Gravy or Honey Baked Ham, but something more along the lines of menus you'd see in a Martha Stewart publication (at least before she was thrown in the slammer.) Depending on whose in-laws' turn it is to have "their" kids at home, our Christmas gathering is usually between 12 and 16 guests.

Whereas I despise coming home from work and throwing something together for dinner, I really love planning and creating challenging menus for special occasions.  Most of it is like food as therapy or a really aromatic hobby, but I must admit there is a small part of me that thirsts for the awed expressions and audible moans emanating from the table when I unveil the year's holiday feast.  Ducking my head, I shrug off the praise I so secretly covet, gloating inwardly.

This year I planned a marvelous, old-fashioned menu that I was going to modernize with my prodigious culinary skills and vivid imagination:  Standing Rib Roast with Horseradish Cream, Cranberry Waldorf Salad, Bacon Scalloped Potatoes, Trusty Green Bean Casserole, and a Fresh Fruit, Vanilla Pudding, and Yellow Pound Cake Christmas Trifle.  As is my custom I prepped most of it a day in advance, and to insure my timing was perfect, wrote out a detailed railroad schedule that went something like this:

12:30 Remove roast from fridge
1:15 Preheat oven to 375
1:25 Season roast with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and garlic powder
1:30 Place roast in oven
1:31 Drink a glass of water
1:32 Remove yeasty dinner rolls from freezer to thaw and rise in a sunny window
1:36 You get the idea

Our guests arrived promptly at 4:30 which was perfect, because according to my OCD timetable I had exactly one hour of free time to socialize, pour wine, and open gifts before entering the critical last 45 minute home stretch of cooking dinner.

All was sailing along swimmingly, and right on cue, at 6:10 everything was done at the same time, announced by the simultaneous pings of three separate timers.  The potatoes were steaming cheesy goodness, the green beans crispy under home made onion strings.  The fruit salad provided a sweet and  crunchy contrast to the richness of the other dishes and the rolls were so light we had to fetch them from the air with butterfly nets.

Moooooooooo

The prime rib roast, however, was raw.  Not rare.  Raw.  $265 of gushing blood with a heartbeat.  If you picked it up and put it to your ear you could hear the distant lowing of grass-fed cattle in a newly mown field. My face turned about as red as the slab of meat in the roasting pan as I hurriedly covered everything else in foil to keep warm in the oven.  I could feel the crestfallen faces watching my back as I shoved the rib roast back in for another hour (or twelve.)

I had used a "fool proof" recipe which called for roasting the meat in the oven at a high temperature for an hour and then turning it off for three hours, with strict, even Draconian instructions:  LEAVE THE OVEN DOOR CLOSED.  DO NOT PEEK.  DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT CHECKING THE THERMOMETER OR YOU WILL BE SHOT ON SITE.  WE MEAN IT SO DON'T COP AN ATTITUDE JUST OBEY YOUR ORDERS.

During the social hour preceding the disaster, I remember remarking to someone that I had qualms about this particular approach to cooking because I rely so much on sight and smell and fork testing and this method was more like preparing a pig in a poke. "Oh don't worry," they said, "your food always comes out fantastic."

And, hours later when we finally ate it, it was.  Our guests were so hungry they thought it was the best thing they'd ever put in their mouths.  They ate every last bite of the roast, the potatoes, beans, rolls, fruit salad, and trifle.  (They also ate a box of Cheerios, some gummy bears, twenty-eight Milky Ways and half a pepperoni pizza that had been in the back of my SUV for two days.)  Thanking me profusely as they backed out the front door, they scurried out to their cars to try and make it the ten miles home before sun up.

Next Christmas I know exactly what I am going to make for our annual holiday dinner--

Reservations.