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Pot Roast
(Arrosto morto) This can be done with all kinds of meats, but the best is milk veal. Take a good piece of the loins , roll it and tie with a string and put on the fire with good olive oil and butter, both in small quantity. Brown well from all sides, salt when half cooked and complete the cooking with a half cup of broth, seeing that little juice remains. If no broth is at hand, use tomato sauce, or tomato paste diluted with water. Some corned beef chopped fine can also be added. 131
A stovetop braise rather than a roast, and the whole dish turns on keeping the liquid low and the heat gentle. Two points in the translation need untangling before you start.
- "Arrosto morto" is not a pot roast as Americans know itThe name is usually explained as a "dead" roast, i.e. one cooked in a covered pan on the hearth rather than turning before a live fire. There is only half a cup of liquid: this is a browned, self-basting roast finished in its own concentrated juices, not meat submerged in stock.
- The "corned beef"This is almost certainly the translator's rendering of carnesecca, the dry salt-cured pork belly that Tuscan cooks chop into a soffritto. Use pancetta, about 2 oz finely diced, added with the oil and butter. American corned beef brisket will taste wrong.
- Milk vealMilk-fed (formula-fed) veal is still sold but is pale, lean and expensive; a 2-3 lb boneless veal shoulder or breast behaves better in a long braise than loin, which dries out. If you want the loin as written, expect a shorter cooking time.
- TyingRoll and tie at 1-inch intervals with butcher's twine. This is not decorative: an even cylinder browns uniformly and stays juicy in a pan where only the bottom surface touches heat.
- Pan and fatUse a heavy pot barely wider than the meat, so the small amount of liquid does not spread thin and evaporate. "Small quantity" of oil and butter means roughly a tablespoon of each, enough to brown, not to fry.
- Salting halfwaySalting after browning is deliberate in the Italian tradition, on the reasoning that early salt draws out juices and hinders the crust. Salt the outside once the meat has coloured on all sides.
- Heat and timeAfter the broth goes in, cover and hold at a bare simmer, the lowest flame that keeps a lazy bubble. Reckon 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours for a 2-3 lb piece, turning it every 20 minutes; veal shoulder is done when a skewer meets no resistance. Internal temperature of 145F is the modern minimum for whole cuts of veal.
- "Little juice remains"The finish is a few spoonfuls of glossy, syrupy pan juice per person, not gravy. If liquid is still loose when the meat is tender, lift the roast out, rest it, and boil the pan down.
- YieldA 2-3 lb tied roast serves 4 to 6. Rest 10 minutes, cut the strings, and slice across the grain.
Arrosto morto belongs to the everyday repertoire of the Italian kitchen rather than the feast-day one, and the name is often explained as a piece of hearthside shorthand: a live roast turned on a spit before the fire, a "dead" one sat in a covered pan on the coals. Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina (1891) gives the same method with the same insistence on very little liquid and on salting partway through. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was aimed at American households curious about Italian food at a moment when large-scale immigration had made it visible but not yet familiar, and its terse, ingredient-light entries assume a cook who already knows how a braise behaves. The instruction to fall back on tomato paste diluted with water when there is no broth is a fair snapshot of the period: canned conserva could be had in Italian-American groceries, homemade stock was not always at hand.