Sometimes, it's just about surrounding yourself with people who make you laugh, in your own home, cooking a comforting meal and relaxing.
This past Sunday night was just such a night.
I had procured from Jeff at Pierotti (see the post about them here) a gorgeous 2.5lb sirloin roast. I rubbed the meat with a mix of coarse-ground ground sea salt, four kinds of peppercorns, herbes de provence, and coriander seeds. I seared the roast on all sides over very high heat in my Le Creuset dutch oven, til I had a nice brown crust all 'round. I let the meat rest for a few minutes while I got going on the vegetables.
I started some really beautiful autumn-y vegetables (butternut squash, sweet potato, beets, cipollini and red onions, and a few stalks of celery) cooking in the pan I seared the roast in. Seasoned very similarly to the roast, but excluding the herbes de Provence.
Everything went into a 400 degree oven for around an hour, until the thermometer in the meat registered 135. Note: I put the meat directly on the rack, with the pan of vegetables positioned directly beneath to catch all the drippings. I gave the veggies a toss every 15-20 minutes. I turned the meat one time about half-way through the cooking time (thermometer would probably register around 100 degrees at this point).
While the roast was resting, the veggies were transferred to a serving dish and kept warm in the oven. Meanwhile, I made a pan sauce right in the pan the veggies were cooked in. These are "eyeball" measurements, but I used about 1.5 cups of red wine and a cup or so of good, low-sodium beef broth. Let everything reduce down, adding a pinch of allspice and ground coriander. Added a good pat of butter to finish it off and give it a beautiful sheen.
Carved the roast and presented everything at the table with a simple salad of peppercress, arugula & romaine with thinly sliced shallots and a balsamic vinaigrette.
With this deliciously simple, and extraordinarily comforting meal we opened a bottle of Green & Red Chiles Valley ' 99 Zin. This is an image I borrowed it from their website, so it's not the right vintage.
I'm really glad we opened it, because even though my original notes said to drink through 2006, it was definitely advanced because of my prior sub-optimal storage conditions.
Once the wine opened up, there was still plenty of fruit on the palate, with a subtler spice than I had remembered. It seems to me that the earlier vintages of Green & Red were heavier on the pepper, while this bottle was a softer anise type of spice. It had a beautiful long finish that was slightly "toasted". All told, an excellent companion to the meal.