This is one of the things I make for the same reason I make all of the things I make. Either a) it's in my blood or b) people like it but, getting older and wiser or at least lazier, it's pretty much both or I wouldn't bother
I like to do this with an eye of round, or a part of one. If you go back to as in c.f. Bracciolatini you'll see why we have pieces of eye of round left over. But an on-top-of-things German cooking for a big group would get a top round, bottom round or rump roast. We like this for a smaller gathering. If it were a bunch for Christmas we'd probably make Christmas Gumbo or turkey or something and if it were just the two of us probably just a crab-stuffed flounder, but this fits in-between.
OK, let's get on with it. We're going to put some red onion, peppercorns, juniper berries and bay leaves into a marinade consisting of red wine, red vinegar and water in ratio 1:1:4. Juniper berries are good but you'd be hard put to use more than 20 a year so they get old. Sometimes I wonder why we bother so just throw in a shot of Beefeaters or Tanqueray.
Anyway, it all goes in a container to keep it all wet, turn once a day and park in the fridge for several days. When it comes out we drain the marinade and save it . Since we're going to use it again it could be good to de-scum, as it were. The denatured proteins that accumulate in any marinate will form a scum when heated.
Just bring it to a slow boil and scoop off as much scum as you can. If you wanted a really clear sauce you could put it through a coffee filter but that's a “spot of bother” and more trouble than we need for this one. Meanwhile, lets worry about an elegant green thing for a side.
We're just taking Brussel sprouts, peeling the outer leaves, cutting off the stem and cutting an X in the base which is said keeps them together. Then they get blanched in boiling salted water for however long it takes, depending on the size, and quenched in an ice bath.
I mean, if you can find them all the same size, buying them loose, you can get small ones and do 6 minutes or so. If you have to buy a package then you'll have to either try to make them the same size by pulling more leaves off the larger ones or segregate them and throw some in early, some in the middle and some later so they can cook 10, 8 or 6 minutes. Either way, once they're quenched and spun dry, just cut them in half and then, now that the do-ahead is over, when it's time to serve give them a quick sauté and browning in some melted butter in a skillet, deglaze with the juice of half a lemon or don't, depending. Give Piérre Franey credit for this one.
Meanwhile, the devilishly clever Germans say, for your red cabbage, get a tiny onion and pierce it with whole cloves so later you can pick it out and guests won't be biting on cloves. Possibly that even works. They also thicken their gravy with good gingersnaps. Those are imported ones from Denmark that… no, we didn't buy but rather someone gave us. Just a handful in an Oscar and you've got thickening crumbs
If you don't have fancy Danish gingersnaps then you can bake your own Lebkuchen although many people have cans of European gingersnaps full of crumbs from the hard Atlantic crossing. Or you can make a copper roux and put in some good ginger.
Meanwhile we're going to get some serious fat – I'm using bacon drippings – to brown the roast all the way around and then taking it out for a bit, throwing in our mire poix and letting it sweat down nicely.
Finally, we're adding flour to make a roux, cooking the veggies in that a bit, pouring the marinade and perhaps some extra wine and water into the pot and then putting the roast back in. All that comes off the cook-top and goes in a slow oven with a cover, for a couple or three hours.
While that's going on we'll shred up a head of red cabbage and anoint it with salt, sugar and red vinegar, chop up and sweat some yellow onion and some Rome apples, put in the cabbage, add the onion with the cloves, bay leaves and some water, cover and let simmer an hour and a half or so, and cut an X in some chestnuts for roasting later as a nice side dish or hors d'œurves as it were.
And, since it's Christmas and we have guests coming we'll put up a string of festive nightlights to the guest bathroom. Hey, why not? You got it: flaunt it!
When the roast is done, we pull it out to rest and strain the gravy, using a pestle to get all there is to get out of the mire poix, then bring it back to a boil and thicken it with the gingersnap crumbs. Seems we photographed very little of that. Oh, well.
Meanwhile we're mixing up spätzle batter out of flour,milk, eggs and nutmeg. You could go with 3 C of flour, 4 eggs, 1 C of milk, 1 tsp of salt and ¼ tsp nutmeg and scale that up or down as you want.
There's nothing quite like spätzle for texture and mouth feel, pasta aside, for anything with nice sauces or gravies. Or if you're into the Teutonic palate and don't have a sauce you can always toast up a cup of bread crumbs in a stick of melted butter although your cardiologist won't recommend that.
The batter then gets loaded into a press and dropped into boiling water, and the product retrieved therefrom. If you don't have a press there are various suggestions none of which are worth much.
OK, well, essentially they say put the batter into a colander and push it into the water. I never had no luck with that. But maybe if you had one of those curved things to force stuff through a colander you might. But, notice the pics above. The press is a long way above the water. If you put the colander on top of the pot and try to shove the steam will cook the dough inside it before any falls though. But the best thing to do is… really, lots of people have spätzle presses who never use them, get tired of cleaning them afterward or are just tired of them. If you make friends with enough of them eventually somebody will give you one. They're not really that hard to clean IF you put them in cold water to soak, after use, instead of leaving them to dry to cement overnight.
When the red cabbage is finished braising you just stir in about 3 TBL red wine and 3 TBL red currant jelly. Slice up the roast nicely. We didn't take pictures of any of that or sautéing the Brussel sprouts or anything but give us a break; it's Christmas!
Well, that our story. Try it or don't. If you make bracciolatini you gotta do somethin' with the rest of the eye of round.