Holiday parties often call for feeding crowds all at once, so this year we offer two impressive main courses that make that easy. They are as good at room temperature as they are hot from the oven.
For a beef option, we challenged ourselves to transform a thrifty, low-cost cut of beef into a lush, celebratory meal. The answer was eye round, a roast often deemed too lean to be tender. To roast this tough cut and get succulent, perfectly cooked results, we marinated the meat in ingredients that would do the work for us — starting with a sticky, sweet puree of prunes. That may sound unusual, but prunes are high in hygroscopic sorbitol and fructose, which — along with salt and soy sauce — amplify the way the meat absorbs flavor.
