My sister-in-law Leigh recently paid me a visit. She came to Hawley to experience our cold temperatures. (She has recently moved to Florida.) She also generously offered to assist in the last-ditch effort to proofread my new cookbook before it goes off to the printer.
One problem with proofreading a cookbook is that it inspires the proofreader to crave many of the dishes in the book. Every hour or so, Leigh would say, “We really must prepare this dish before I leave.”
She has now headed south, and we didn’t manage to make all of the dishes she wanted to try. This is fortunate. We would have run out of time for proofreading, and my grocery bill would have grown even larger than it already is! Moreover, we were handicapped in our choice of appliances.
On one particularly busy day, my oven went out of commission. I absent-mindedly added too much baking soda to a cake, and the cake (I use the term loosely) exploded in the oven. I won’t be able to use the oven again until I scrub it thoroughly. I hope to do that soon.
Meanwhile, Leigh and I managed to prepare quite a few items using the toaster oven and the stovetop. We used the latter for a dish from the book my sister-in-law had never tasted, Lillian Hellman’s pot roast.
As I explain in the manuscript, the pot roast is based on a recipe by the late playwright and author, but it’s not identical to hers. It has been filtered by a couple of processes.
One is analogous to what we called in elementary school “the telephone game,” the exercise in which children whisper something in their neighbors’ ears. The message is passed from whisperer to whisperer. The final recipient never seems to hear the original message.
In the case of the pot roast, I found the recipe in the 1983 novel “Heartburn” by Nora Ephron. If you haven’t read this book, run right out and get it. It’s a delightful, laugh-out-loud fictionalized version of Ephron’s divorce from journalist Carl Bernstein.
Divorce may not sound funny, but Ephron makes it so in her book. When I first read “Heartburn,” I decided that Ephron was a female version of Woody Allen, only better, a person who could turn life’s trials into humor with a deft touch.
Soon after “Heartburn” Ephron proved me right by writing (and eventually directing) touching, funny films like “When Harry Met Sally” and “Julie & Julia.”
I love her writing, but I can’t be 100 percent sure that she transcribed Lillian Hellman’s recipe accurately. Both Hellman and Ephron are now dead so no one can confirm the recipe’s authenticity. They were the whisperers in my telephone game.
The second process that makes my pot roast different from Lillian Hellman’s original version is the tendency of home cooks (particularly this one) to tinker with recipes.
When I revisited the recipe in “Heartburn” years after I first prepared it, I discovered that I had added a number of ingredients. I had also changed the cooking method. Ephron reports that Hellman’s pot roast was cooked in the oven. I simmer mine on the stove.
Nevertheless, I still think of this recipe as belonging to Hellman. It’s a warming thing to eat when the wind blows outside. It’s not inexpensive to make, but my family eats it at least twice. We then transform what is left into soup by adding beef stock, more tomatoes, more carrots, and some corn kernels.
This recipe uses two processed foods, condensed cream of mushroom soup and onion-soup mix. If you are uncomfortable with those, feel free to add sauteed mushrooms near the end of cooking … and to use more onions plus salt and pepper.
I’m not a fan of processed foods, but there are so many natural ingredients in this recipe that I pay tribute to Hellman by keeping her two soup items when I make the pot roast.
Here is Ephron’s basic recipe with my amendments. Neither her version nor mine is complicated. And they’re both tasty.
Ingredients:
1 4-pound piece of beef (“the more expensive, the better,” says Ephron)
1 can (about 10 ounces) cream of mushroom soup
1 envelope dried onion-soup mix
1 large onion, chopped (I have been known to use 2)
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cups red wine (plus!)
2 cups water (plus)
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 large can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried and crushed chipotle pepper
1 generous pound carrots, cut into wedges
7 to 8 cut up medium potatoes
a handful of chopped parsley
Instructions:
Place the beef, the soup, the soup mix, the onion, the garlic, the wine, the water and the herbs in a large Dutch oven on the stovetop. Add the tomatoes and the chipotle plus a little more wine and water so that the pot roast is almost covered.
Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer the pot all day. I almost cover the pot. Stir from time to time, and watch for burning.
In the last couple of hours, add the carrots and the potatoes. Add half of the parsley before the last half hour of cooking and use the rest for garnish. (If I don’t have fresh parsley, as I didn’t most recently, I omit the garnish.)
Serves 8. This is even better made one day and reheated the next.
Tinky Weisblat is the award-winning author of three cookbooks. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.