Kitchen Experiment

Yesterday I made it to the grocery store and decided to pick up a rump roast. That was before I realised that the rump roast is not a very good cut of meat, and requires tenderising. I'm not sure how many ways there are to tenderise a roast, but the two that I do know of are to:
1. Beat the roast with some kind of mallet.
2. Marinate in red wine.

As much as I am enjoying this new cooking habit that I have seemed to have developed, I am still rather lazy in the kitchen. Faced with the two choices, I chose option #2. I figured it would be the easier of the two, although beating the roast with a mallet would have resulted in me releasing some pent up agression. Until I had to clean the mallet, and probably the kitchen, then I would have been filled with it again. I digress.

So tonight as I made my way to Union Station through the underground, I stopped off at the LCBO in First Canadian Place to pick up a bottle of wine. Most of the visit to the store consisted of me wandering around aimlessly while chewing on my fingernail and looking at wine bottles in a way that I thought would make me look like I knew what I was doing. Apparently I was wrong, as the kind man who works at the LCBO wandered over and said "May I help you?"

I think it was a rhetorical question. Or after the whole ordeal I think he wished I had taken it as a rhetorical question. My response was, "Yes. See, I'm cooking a rump roast and I have never done it before. Apparently I am supposed to tenderise it and the best way to do so apparently is to soak it in wine. Except I know nothing about wine. Apparently I know nothing about cooking roasts either."

Luckily we were in the marinating aisle and he pointed out a bottle very quickly. Either that, or he just wanted to get rid of me. I didn't question it, as I was just as happy to get out of the LCBO as he was to get rid of me.

So I carried my bottle in the telltale LCBO bag, and spent the rest of my commute kind of embarassed that it was Monday and I was carrying a bottle of booze around. Sometimes I can be so puritanical.

I got home, changed my clothes, washed my hands, and went straight to work. I threw together a marinade of red wine, mesquite flavoured spices, chiles, and cayenne pepper. I threw it in a Ziplock back with the roast, expelled all the air from the bag, sealed it, and stored it safely in my fridge until tomorrow night. I will let you know how I did on my first attempt at doing a marinade on my own tomorrow.