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Rechauffe Of Beef a la Jardiniere
Put yesterday's piece of meat in a roasting-pan, sprinkle with pepper and salt, cover with thick slices of tomatoes. Pour a cupful of boiling water over it, cover, and cook for thirty-five minutes in a hot oven. Meanwhile boil until tender a pint of green peas, a pint of finely cut up potatoes, 3 carrots cut into small pieces, and 8 or 10 onions. Season these with pepper and salt. Place the beef with the tomatoes on a hot platter and arrange the vegetables neatly around the beef. Send at once to the table.
A reheated joint dressed up with fresh vegetables. The whole point is moisture: the covered pan and the tomatoes are what keep already-cooked beef from turning to leather.
- Keep it coveredThe lid is not optional. Cooked beef has no fat or juice left to lose, and thirty-five minutes uncovered in a hot oven will dry it out completely. Use a tight lid or seal the pan with foil.
- "A hot oven"400-425F. If your beef is a thin end-cut rather than a solid piece, drop to 350F and check at twenty minutes; you are only heating it through, not cooking it again.
- Pint measuresThese are volume measures, not weights: a pint of shelled peas is roughly 10 oz, a pint of diced potato roughly 12 oz.
- The onionsEight to ten onions in one dish suggests small onions rather than full-sized cooking ones, which in that number would swamp the plate; the recipe does not actually say whether they are left whole.
- Vegetables cooked separatelyEach one wants its own timing -- carrots and potatoes eight to twelve minutes, peas two or three. Boiling them together as written in one pot gives grey peas. Drain well or the platter floods.
- TomatoesThick slices of a firm tomato, skin on, laid over the meat; they collapse into a sauce with the cupful of water. Out of season, drained canned whole tomatoes work better than pale fresh ones.
- Reheating cooked meatBring the beef to steaming hot right through, not merely warm. Slice it after reheating rather than before, so the cut faces do not dry.
- YieldDepends entirely on the size of yesterday's joint, but the vegetables as given serve four to six.