Beef Pot Roast, Rustic Tart

Day 20 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I made two dishes; a Beef Pot Roast (Traditional Yankee Pot Roast as it's called in the cookbook), and a Rustic Tart (Rustic Grape Tart, to be specific). It's been so cold here lately I thought a good comfort meal was in store.

So cold that one of the pipes froze and burst in our B&B and wasn't discovered until after dinner; hubby, son in law, and son in law's father spent all evening at the Lodge cleaning up the mess and fixing the pipe. Still not sure how much damage was done and if our gorgeous oak table and hardwood floors will come back ok or not, only time will tell.

I was also going to make one of their biscuit recipes as well and my hubby wanted me to make my own biscuits instead. I'll save the cookbook biscuit recipes for future meals. Here's our thoughts on these two dishes...

TRADITIONAL YANKEE POT ROAST, good flavors, but the meat was overdone...

I have never been able to make a good pot roast for the life of me. I've tried many recipes over the years and haven't been able to master a good one yet. I even cooked this meat 15 minutes less than the directions called for and it was still overdone. I have no idea why a pot roast decides to do battle with me, but it wins every time.

The flavors, however, were really good, and the vegetables were cooked perfectly, just barely done. I tend to like my veggies a little more done, but everyone else in my family likes them less done. I typically cook them for the rest of the family's taste, and these came out perfectly for them.

All in all with this recipe, everyone agreed it was good, and worthy of making again, but the meat needs to be cooked less.

RUSTIC GRAPE TART, not one I'd make again...

Ok, just from the picture in the cookbook, and the type of fruit in this tart, it did not sound appealing to me, nor anyone else in my family, but I had a ton of grapes on hand and it was a recipe I needed to make for the sake of getting through the recipes in the cookbook, so we gave it a shot.

The crust we all loved. I had a hard time getting the crust to come up the sides of the fruit without breaking, probably a little more liquid (orange juice, which was gave it a good flavor) would have helped. There was corn meal in the crust as well and everyone liked the texture and flavor of the crust.

The fruit, on the other hand, did not go over well at all. There was very little to mix in with fruit, a small amount of sugar, cornstarch, vanilla and cinnamon. And the fact that the grapes were left whole did not provide any juices to mix in. The recipe called for half red grapes and half black grapes. Since I had a ton of red grapes on hand and no black grapes I just used red grapes without the black grapes. I'm sure the flavor of the grapes would have been different, but I don't think it would have changed the outcome of this tart overall.

And when it came to cutting and serving this tart, it was not a pretty site. There were grapes flinging off the tray and even onto the floor when my son in law tried to get a bite.

And then the flavors... hmmm.... just not a good idea to make a tart out of strictly grapes. Would have been good with other fruits such as berries or peaches, but not grapes.

This was not a winner with us and we'll not make it again. The crust, though, is a keeper.

37 recipes down, 510 more to go.