Monday, January 5, 2015

Recipe #58 and #59: Pots and Peaches

Recipe: Perfect Pot Roast
Time: 3 hrs 30 min
Ease: 3
Taste: 10
Leftover Value: No leftovers!
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

I blogged about this recipe three years ago. This was the year before I started the Orange Strainer. By reading this post, you can tell what a novice cook I was, allowing a pot roast to get the better of me.

Despite what you will read in my previous post, this is a ridiculously simple recipe with flavor that will amaze all who join your dinner table.

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I'm on a mission to discover easy recipes that taste like they have been slaved over for hours.

That's the dream, isn't it?

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Side veggies cook right in the pot with the roast, the juices create a delightful gravy, and the only additional item you'll need to make is buttery, milky mashed potatoes.

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I served this for two of my brothers and my sister-in-law the night before Christmas Eve...you know, Christmas Eve Eve. I used a 3-lb roast because my grocery store options were that or a monstrous sized roast.*

*A word to the wise, monstrous is better than measly. This shrimpy 3-lb roast was barely enough for us all. In other words, we had to eat politely.

Unacceptable.

The meat is so moist and tender that you really don't need any gravy, but it's nice to know it is there.

Recipe: Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce
Time: 1 hr 20 min (includes cream sauce chill time)
Ease: 3
Taste: 7
Leftover Value: 3
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

On her website, PW gives a cheat to making the cream sauce quickly. In the book, however, she says to chill the cream sauce for at least an hour. 

Because I'm a rule follower...this is what I did.

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However, because another part of me is a little rebellious and stubborn, I did not use fresh peaches for this recipe.

I also did not use common sense in deciding what to use instead of fresh peaches.

For some reason, my mind immediately went to canned peaches.

I was smart enough to know I would need to drain the liquid from the can considering that PW used fresh peaches that she peeled and sliced.*

*Gosh, that sounds like a lot of work.

In all honesty, I wasn't trying to avoid peeling and slicing 6-7 peaches. It simply isn't the time of year for peaches. And while I planned ahead for time-of-year items at the beginning of this challenge with Katie's Roasted Corn Salad, I didn't when it came to peach crisp.

It wasn't until my peach crisp turned out looking like this, even after plenty of added baking time, that I realized, "Duh! I should have used frozen peaches!"

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Even with the overabundance of liquid in this "crisp", the flavors all combined into this absolutely divine peach crisp soup.

A soup which I am pretty sure every one of us burnt our tongues on due to our over eagerness to eat it.

PW is right about the cream sauce. It is so delicious I could've drank it like a milkshake.

My thighs would have hated me for it, but my belly, mouth, and soul would have been happy.

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