Daily Archives: 10/8/2005

More about pot roast…

I’ve mused about potroast before on my blog, but it’s such a great (and now overlooked) dish when it came up on Slashfood
I thought it deserved a link. A couple of additional comments on the recipe presented:

  • This is a long cooking recipe, so if you want any of the vegetables to actually be in one piece, I wouldn’t add them until later. The mirapois (celery, carrots, and onion) add a lot to the flavor, so I’d go ahead and use them from the get go, but I’d add the potatos and peas later in the cooking process, after the meat is half done at least. Otherwise the little potatoes will dissolve and the peas, well, I usually add frozen peas just before serving.
  • I’d probably brown the meat, set it aside, lower the heat and sweat my mirapois for three minutes or so, then add the garlic for 30 seconds longer, deglaze the pan with a little red wine, and then dump it all in the slow cooker.
  • I like chuck for pot roast, which can have quite a bit of fat. Skim it off as it cooks. It doesn’t add any flavor, and just makes the roast greasy.

There you have it: more on pot roast.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Movie Info – Yahoo! Movies

The movie for the weekend is Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the first full-length Wallace and Gromit movie produced by Aardman and distributed by Dreamworks.

I’m a great fan of Wallace and Gromit, in particular Close Shave and the brilliant Wrong Trousers, both of which won Academy Awards for Nick Parks, so I was looking forward to a full feature length dose of the man and his dog.

Sadly, I think the longer format doesn’t really help. It’s not a bad movie, but it really doesn’t seem to reach the level of their previous efforts. Both A Close Shave and Wrong Trousers achieve a certain degree of actual tension and excitement which Curse of the Were Rabbit never seems to reach. It might be just a matter of pacing, but I also think that perhaps the story isn’t as imaginative as his previous efforts.

It’s getting pretty good reviews, others seem to like it just fine, I merely thought it could have been better. I’d give it a B- or so.