BOOK/A TABLE - King and I

In a drafty auditorium, while other cast members were taking a break from rehearsal, I sat glued to one of the theater seats reading Stephen King’s The Shining. It was around Hallowe’en, I was about 12 or 13 years old and our local theater group, the Garrison Players, was putting on a musical revue called Encore, Encore!. I don’t know where any of the other performers had scuttled off to, but I do know some moldy dead woman was climbing out of a bathtub at the Overlook Hotel. 

I was alone in that huge auditorium, well, just me and the old woman, when suddenly a wild gust of wind blew in from the lobby, a door slammed shut, and I jumped about a foot. I spun around, on the defensive, but no one was there. It was just the wind...and I knew that, but as I settled back down in my chair and returned to The Shining, I knew too that I’d just experienced the power of a great book.

By opening night, I was duly recovered. Curiously enough I’d been enlisted to kick off the show (in knickers) with ‘I Whistle a Happy Tune’ from The King and I—about the King of Siam, not Stephen.

There’s also the character of Wendy in The Shining, the hapless (certainly not helpless) wife, exploring the vast hotel kitchen, looking for something to make for dinner. To me, the whole scene has such a creepy feel about it, like a trip to the morgue...

“When she opened the big walk-in freezer the light clicked on automatically. The chill made her gasp. The shelves were neatly stacked with lamb chops, roasts, chickens, frozen vegetables.” 

But let’s take a moment to think about those roasts in a different (and certainly more appetizing) light: here I present a simple, best ever off-oven roast beef that I’m sure you’ll take a shine to.

And don’t overlook the divine Henry Bain sauce!

Off-Oven Roast Beef
Adapted from New York Magazine

Serves 4 to 6 as a main course, with leftovers for sandwiches

Ingredients
1 beef roast, like top, eye or bottom round, approximately 3 pounds
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
Red-pepper flakes to taste

Preparation
Remove roast from refrigerator. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

In a small bowl, mix together salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil and red-pepper flakes to create a kind of paste. Rub this all over the roast. 

Place beef in a roasting pan or cast-iron skillet, fat-side up, and put in oven. Cook undisturbed for 5 minutes per pound.

Turn off oven. Do not open oven door. Leave roast to continue cooking, undisturbed, for two hours.
After two hours, remove roast from oven. Slice and serve alongside, ideally, a watercress salad, some skillet-fried potatoes and a small tureen of Henry Bain sauce.