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John Torre
3 POUNDS LEAN RUMP OR ROUND OF BEEF 14 POUND MACARONI 2 ONIONS 2 CUPS TOMATOES SEASON WITH SALT, CAYENNE, MUSTARD, WORCESTERSHIRE, TA- BASCO, CURRY AND/OR WHAT-HAVE-YOU.
Boil meat tender; when done remove and boil macaroni tender in the kettle broth. Chop onion fine and fry in butter, add tomatoes and a little of the broth; season with salt, cayenne, mustard, Worcestershire, Tabasco and a pinch of curry or similar seasoning.
Chop meat fine and add to sauce; let all simmer a few minutes, put in baking dish a layer of cooked macaroni, a layer of grated cheese, then the meat mixture; keep moist and bake slowly 1 hour.
This is a favorite dish of chuck wagon chefs on the plains, specially well suited to a Come-and-get-it feed.
A chuck-wagon casserole built in two stages: a long boil that yields both tender beef and a seasoned broth, then a baked assembly. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities and the oven direction need translating.
- Bake slowly"Bake slowly" points to what would now be a low oven, somewhere in the 275-325F range; the recipe itself gives no temperature. An hour at that heat is about right for a covered dish that only needs to heat through and marry.
- The macaroni quantityThe printed "14 POUND" has lost its fraction bar and is almost certainly 1/4 pound. Against 3 lb of beef and 2 cups of tomatoes, a quarter to a half pound of dry macaroni gives sensible proportions; a full pound would swamp the meat.
- Boil the meat, then the pastaThe point of cooking the macaroni in the beef broth is flavor, so do not drain and discard that liquid. Rump or round wants 2 to 2.5 hours at a bare simmer to go genuinely tender; cook the macaroni in the same pot afterward, slightly short of al dente since it bakes again.
- Keep moistThis is the hinge of the recipe. Reserve a cup or two of the broth and add it as the dish assembles, and cover for most of the bake. Boiled beef and pasta both drink liquid in a slow oven, and an underdressed casserole comes out dry and floury.
- Chop meat fineBoiled beef shreds more readily than it chops. Pull it along the grain and then run a knife through it; the aim is a texture that distributes through the sauce rather than sits in cubes.
- The seasoning listSalt, cayenne, mustard, Worcestershire, Tabasco and curry is a chuck-wagon spice box rather than a formula. Season the tomato-onion base, then taste again after the meat goes in, since 3 lb of unsalted boiled beef will flatten whatever you added first.
- CheeseNo type is specified. A firm grating cheese that melts cleanly, cheddar or a dry jack, suits the dish; count on 6 to 8 oz.
- YieldThree pounds of beef plus pasta feeds eight to ten generously, which is the scale the name implies.