Layered Pot Roast With Anchovies, Capers And Garlic
Hearty pot roast gets big flavor thanks to capers, onions, garlic and anchovies in this simple dish from the South of France, Grillades à L’Arlésienne.
Servings 4
Ingredients
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons capers drained and chopped
- 1/4 cup fresh chopped flat leaf parsley
- 4 anchovy fillets packed in oil, drained and minced (or 2 teaspoons anchovy paste—see Kitchen Notes)
- 4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 2- pound boneless chuck roast cut crosswise into 8 slices (see Kitchen Notes)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325ºF. In a bowl, combine the onion, garlic, capers, parsley and anchovies.
- Pour 2 tablespoons of the olive oil into a small lidded casserole—large enough to just hold half the meat in a single layer. Arrange 4 slices of the meat in the bottom of the casserole. Top with half of the onion mixture. Arrange the remaining meat slices in a single layer on top of the first and top with the remaining onion mixture. Drizzle the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the top and cover the casserole with a lid.
- Place casserole in oven and roast until meat is tender, about 2-1/2 hours. (You can also cook this on the stovetop, but I think the oven is a better choice—see Kitchen Notes.)
- At this point, you can serve the dish, but the flavor actually improves if you refrigerate it overnight and reheat it. I popped the cold casserole dish in the oven for half an hour at 325ºF to reheat it while I prepared the sides. (Make sure you use a casserole that can go from the fridge to a hot oven.)
Kitchen Notes
Anything fishy about the anchovies? Mincing the anchovies, or using anchovy paste, will help them completely blend in, adding a nice umami.
A chuck roast by any other name. The original recipe called for boneless beef rump. After doing a little research and finding that the flavor and potential toughness issues were similar to chuck roast, I went for the more readily available cut. If you can find a nice thick chuck roast rather than the flatter slabs some stores offer, go for that.
Oven or stove? The original recipe advocated stovetop cooking "at a bare simmer," offering the oven approach as an alternative. Unless you can set your stove's burner really, really, really low, use the oven. Otherwise, you risk drying out the meat and making it tough.