Roast with IPA demi-glace

More cooking with beer!  This time was a recipe from Dinner Impossible, which makes me pretty proud of myself, because that chef is a bad-ass.

Basically there were four components to this dinner:  a roast, a demi-glace, vegetables, and a potato-crab risolle.  I didn't know what a risolle was, but if it has potatoes and crab in it, it sounds good to me.


The roast was easy: you just rub it with a mixture of horseradish and pepper, then put it in the oven until the internal temperature reaches the level of doneness that you want.  I should add that the quality of meat is important:  I spent a significant amount of money on a very nice grass-fed roast from Whole Foods.  And it was everybody's favorite part of the meal, and one of my favorite cuts of meat of all time.  And it was pink, and I ate it anyway.  Be proud, world.


While the roast is baking, you work on the demi-glace, risolle, and vegetables. 


The demi-glace is basically sauteed onions with beer (in this case, a pale ale) and some beef base dissolved in water.  You start this early because it needs to reduce by at least half.  I had heard of beef base and chicken base before, basically that it is better than bouillon and a lot of chefs use it as a secret ingredient.  It was weird and kind of reminded me of chocolate mousse.


For the risolle, you boil the potatoes for about 20-30 minutes until tender, then mash with cooked onions, scallions, and fresh lump crab meat.  You can set this aside to wait for a pan / burner to become open!  I didn't really have the time or energy to shape the risolle into little three-inch rings as the recipe suggested, so I just pan-fried the whole amount and put it in a bowl for serving.  It was still delicious.

For the vegetables, you julienne some carrots, yellow peppers, green peppers, and cut some green beans.  You also chop up some scallions or onions for flavor.  This all just gets tossed in a pot for a few minutes with some oil, so this was the last thing to get done.

I was really happy with how everything turned out - it was a lot of work, but it was a delicious and healthy meal that didn't make me hate myself afterward.  AND, I felt very accomplished, because I totally respect the "Dinner Impossible" guy.  I didn't see any reviews on the Food Network website, so I might be one of the only ones ever to have attempted it.  Woo, cooking with beer!