Beef Roast Braised with Onions

Preheat oven to 325˚.

Cut pork into narrow strips. Use half the strips to lard the meat (use a larding needle or any blunt, narrow stick, i.e. a chopstick, pierce with the grain & insert.)

Insert the cloves at random into any 5 of the places where the pork was inserted.

Choose a heavy-bottomed pot just large enough to accommodate the roast snugly. Spread the sliced onion on the bottom of the pot, over it distribute the remaining strips of pork, then put in the meat. Season liberally with salt and pepper and cover tightly. Put on the uppermost rack of the preheated oven.

Cook for about 3½ hours, until the meat feels very tender when prodded with a fork. Turn the roast after the first 30 minutes, and every 30 to 40 minutes thereafter. You will find that the color of the meat is dull at first, but as it finishes cooking and the onions become colored a dark brown it develops a rich, dark patina.

When done, slice the meat and arrange the slices on a warm platter. Pour the contents of the pan and the juices left on the cutting board over the meat and serve.

What is remarkable about this roast is that it is braised with only the juices that flow from the onions on which the meat rests. Eventually the juices vanish, the meat becomes tenderly impregnated with sweet onion flavor, and the onions themselves turn deliciously brown.

Makes 4 to 6 servings