Serendipitous Stew

     Saturday, I made pot roast.  This isn't unusual.  Most Saturdays, I make either beef pot roast or roast pork, with a changing array of vegetables and seasoning.  This Saturday, it was cooked with a turnip, parsnips, red potatoes, carrots, celery, yellow onion and fresh porcini mushrooms.  I seasoned the roast with coarse kosher salt and pepper, browned it on all sides with a half-strip of bacon (and added some garlic powder and Italian mix seasoning as it was browning), then set it on the rack.  I poured almost a cup of coffee into the bottom of the pan and sprinkled a tablespoon of lime juice over the roast, and set it roasting with the lid on.  (Trust me, this works.  You don't taste either in the end result.)

     I usually go for an hour per pound and the roast was two and a half pounds.  I set timers every thirty minutes as a reminder to look in on the pot.

     After a half hour, I started adding vegetables -- chunks of turnip first (and a very little ginger powder and ground cloves), then parsnips, then beef broth up to not quite the top of the rack, potatoes and so on in the order listed above, taking my time and adding them in layers.  I kept an eye on the liquid level; you want everything to kind of steam.  I didn't add the mushrooms until there was only an hour to go.

     At the end, I took out the meat and let it rest while I poured the broth into my grease separator.  We had slices of roast and plenty of vegetables with a little broth over them, a nice Saturday dinner.

     There was enough left for two more meals, so I put together a couple of gallon freezer bags with equal amounts of broth, vegetables and meat and left them to freeze.

     Sunday dinner came and I wanted to put together something from the leftovers that wasn't the same.  I had an eight-ounce can of tomato sauce, some celery and carrot.  I snipped a whole slice of bacon into sections and got them about half-fried in the pan while I started the leftover pot roast defrosting in the microwave.  I cut up three stalks of celery and  about the same amount of carrots and added them to the bacon to sautee; you want to keep them stirred.  The idea is to keep the vegetables a bit crisp.  I poured off the excess bacon fat, added the mostly-defrosted pot roast and the tomato sauce, with a little basil and a bay leaf.  After five minutes or so, I went after the slices of meat and larger chunks of vegetables with the kitchen shears, cutting them down to stew-sized pieces, then let the pan simmer for another ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

     Tam and I had dinner while watching an episode from the first season of Strange New Worlds.*  I hadn't tasted the stew while cooking, trusting my nose instead.

     The first taste was a remarkable surprise.  Anyone who enjoys a nice BLT knows tomato and bacon goes well together, and with the good broth and vegetables, it was outstanding, smoky and rich with umami.  The meat was tender and the combination of sauteed and slow-cooked vegetables worked well with the other flavors.  It was well beyond dressed-up leftovers, more than the sum of its parts.
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* We just started watching this addition to the Star Trek universe and it holds up well, most similar to the original series.  It's also reminiscent of The Orville and I have to wonder if the Star Trek people looked at the success of the upstart series and thought, "Oh, is that what the fans want?  We could do that."  They'll never admit it if they did but it's enjoyable space opera, bang on target.