The Case of the "Purple Pot Roast"

After having a few friends over for dinner last night, I found myself reminiscing about the very first dinner I made for company many, many, years ago...

My ex and I were a typical young, newlywed couple...I was putting him through law school while we were living on my teacher's salary alone. Everyone knows that teacher's are totally underpaid for what they do...so, we were just getting by in those days.

We were new to the Birmingham community and had begun to make some friends, so we decided to have a couple of people over for dinner.

Being on a very tight budget, I remember going to the grocery store and looking for an inexpensive cut of meat to make roast beef for the next evening's meal. I had read through one of my wedding gift cookbooks and learned that any meat could be tenderized by marinating it overnight. So, I picked out the lowest priced beef that I could find that day and then went to the wine section to find my "marinade". Figuring that this was just going to be used to tenderize the meat, again I frugally picked out a very cheap burgundy wine.

When I got home, I excitedly covered the roast with my marinade---cheap wine, garlic, salt and pepper---and allowed it to sit in the refrigerator overnight while I had thoughts of this delicious, tender beef being carved at the table the next night while I glowed in pride.

I also remember thinking, "OK, I bet that the more marinated it is, the more tenderized it will become...." so, instead of draining it, I let it sit in the full bowl of wine the whole next day, too.

Moving ahead to that evening, the table is set, the roast is in the oven, and the aroma is heavenly. We all sit down to have dinner and the marinated roast is placed on the table to be carved with precision for all to see. As the knife went through the meat, I got a glimpse of the first slice. To my embarrassed shock, I saw that instead of a beautiful medium rare roast beef, the slicing was producing strange looking purple meat! Each piece that fell away from the roast was the exact purply, burgundy color of the wine.

Now, a better ending would be to tell you that, in spite of the purple meat, it was flavorful and delicious....but, truth be known, it was still extremely tough, very dry...and pretty much tasted like you would imagine "cheap wine meat"to taste....just awful! It was almost like eating chewy wine. aaack

We all had a good laugh about it that evening and still talk about it to this day.

I believe that the next time that I had company for dinner, I made chicken.... : )