4 small yams
1/3 cup olive oil
1 dried chili pepper
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon ginger, chopped
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
salt

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Place whole yams in a baking dish and bake until tender, about 40 minutes.
3. In a saucepan, heat oil over medium heat with the chili pepper. Discard pepper when browned.
4. Add garlic and ginger and sauté until just browned.
5. Add balsamic vinegar and salt to taste. serve over yams.

Makes 4 servings

16 ounces canned whole beets
2 medium navel oranges, sectioned
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted
1 cup mixed greens or arugula

1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Combine vinegar and mustard in a bowl.
2. Slowly whisk in oil to emulsify, then season with salt and pepper.
3. Arrange greens, beets, oranges and walnuts on a plate and drizzle with the dressing.

Makes 4 servings

4 pound premium beef roast
1 tablespoon fine espresso
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt

1 cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup beef drippings (use beef broth to top off, if necessary)
2 tablespoons red wine
1/4 cup butter
1 tablespoon flour

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees with roaster fitted with a rack inside.
2. Combine espresso, brown sugar, black peppercorns and salt in a bowl to make the rub.
3. Pat the roast dry, cut a crosshatch pattern in the fatty side and rub with the seasoning.
4. Place roast on rack and put it back in the oven, roasting for about an hour and a half or until a meat thermometer reads 135 degrees (for rare).
5. Allow meat to rest while preparing the gravy.
6. Boil balsamic vinegar in a small sauce pan to reduce by half, about 20 minutes.
7. Add the broth, pan drippings and red wine.
8. Combine butter and flour in a small dish and gradually stir into the pan.
9. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook until thickened, stirring constantly.

Makes 16 servings

Dinner tonight was fine, but would have improved drastically with a bit of patience and planning. See, I had a spur of the moment decision to do a coffee themed meal. I found a recipe for an espresso rubbed roast and before I even figured out what I wanted for side dishes, I'd fixed it up and threw it in the oven. That was mistake number one. Finding side dishes involving coffee proved to be far more difficult than I originally thought, especially considering I'd already used the Chipotle Coffee Bean recipe.

Mistake number two is that I was so excited about trying out the roast recipe that I completely negated common cooking
practices and roasted instead of braised a very cheap and gristly cut of meat. Even at rare it was that sort of tender/tough combination that lets you know that had this been a prime cut of beef that it would've been perfect, but instead it's sort of chewy.

Aside my foibles, the flavor of this roast is great. You can definitely taste a roasted coffee musk to it, but it's not
overpowering. In fact, I think you're likely to taste the molasses hint from the brown sugar before the espresso. Over a fire pit this would probably be fantastic. It's not good enough to be my favorite, but it was nice to try something that's very different from what I'm used to. What really set this apart was the gravy. Bar none, the gravy for the Espresso Rubbed Roast was the best gravy I've ever had.

If you're wondering why I'm talking so much about this roast, it's because the side dishes were lackluster. Yams with Ginger Sauce had potential, as basically any yam dish does, but didn't really wow me at all. I like the subtle heat from the pepper-infused oil, but (and this is no fault of the recipe itself, I suppose) the yams were very bland. I'd never bought an organic yam before tonight and my current experience is that they're small, tasteless little brothers to the GM version.

The Orange and Beet Salad seemed as though it had potential. Vinaigrette and beets should
taste like pickled beets, right? Oranges are just tasty anyway, how can you go wrong? If I haven't already admitted so, I'm not really a salad fan. I love my vegetables, but salads don't do it for me. I'd like to chalk my dislike for this salad up to simply disliking salads in general, but I can't. It's just not good. The dressing seems lost in some strange contrast of the beets and oranges, which I thought would go well together, and the walnuts and greens just faded into the background. We didn't even bother keeping this for leftovers; it went straight to the garbage.