Meaty soup bones, chuck steaks, short ribs and shanks are ideal cuts for slow cooking. While grass-fed meat may cook differently from corn-fed meat, recipes are easily available online.
The Leaheys chose a beef chuck roast, bone in, for this recipe. After searing the meat in a Dutch oven, garlic, onions, parsley, thyme and bay leaves are added. The ingredients are generously covered with beef broth, with a bit of tomato paste stirred into the broth, then cooked with the pot covered for about 4 hours.
Caroline Alexander moved to the Berkshires seven years ago after a career in public broadcasting. She continues to develop programming and websites for television, and three years ago she launched BerkshireFoodJournal.com and began documenting the lives and work of local farmers and chefs. Impressed by the intimacy of personal voice in the recordings of her subjects, she photographs her stories and then edits the interviews into audio/slideshows, now archived on her site.