Beer Braised Pot Roast
Funny how inspiration for a meal strikes you sometime. This one started with half a dozen bottles of beer that had been sitting in my fridge for six months - bottles of beer left by my kids during a visit last summer. Bottles of beer taking up space and needing to be used. Oh, I like the occasional beer on a hot summer's day, or even with chili in the winter, but I'm partial to a glass (or two) of wine most of the time. So the beer needed to be drunk, or used in a recipe. And when I thawed this hunk of beef from the freezer, the light bulb went off. Why not make beef a la carbonnade - the classic Belgian beef stew with beer? But instead of carving the roast into cubes, as in the traditional recipe, I wanted to leave it whole, and serve slices of beef in a rich gravy. Start with a roast - this was a top round roast - not an especially tender piece of meat, but braising for three hours takes care of that. Season mightily with salt and pepper and sauté in olive oil until brown al...