Zinfandel Pot Roast with Glazed Carrots and Fresh Sage

It’s a huge piece of meat, so when she says, ‘rub with coarse salt’, use your own good judgement how much salt you use. I used far too much, and it showed, luckily only in the sauce.

Apart from that, it was extremely delicious – at least tastewise. The meat, unfortunately, ended up being pretty tough, and I have no idea why. As for now, I’m happy to blame the circumstances (tiny microwave oven instead of the proper thing, a clay pot with a mind of its own instead of our Le Creuset Dutch oven), but I do hope this will change once we find a new flat. BF at least was very happy with it, but then again, he’ll be happy with any large piece of meat.

We had this with the Roasted Garlic Mash from BBC Good Food, May 2009.

Amendment 12. Jan. 2010: Instead of just plain re-heating, we braised some of the meat for dinner for another hour or so; this time in a pan on the stove. What a difference! For all but one small part the meat was much tenderer than it had been the night before. So it is very likely indeed that the braise failed due to the oven and the clay pot. But how could one hour have made such a difference?