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

  1. Remove roast from refrigerator. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
  2. 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.
  3. Turn off oven. Do not open oven door. Leave roast to continue cooking, undisturbed, for two hours.
  4. 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.