I've got a friend who immigrated to Japan and now runs a school there teaching English. As much as he loves sushi, he says, sometimes what he wants is pot roast. Which is not available – he guarantees – in Japan.

It's also not available in the US, unless you want it to be. Pot roast is a homecooked meal, but for some reason it requires more determination than other meals to get it on the table.

The recipe below isn't anything like what my mother used to make, but it's still a first-rate pot roast, as I think you'll agree if you try it.

I cook carrots, celery and onion with the roast. After the vegetables simmer in the tomato sauce, they become soft and tomatoey but still retain their own flavors. That isn't true of potatoes, which I think taste better when they're cooked separately.

This weekend at the farmers market, Monroe Organic Farms – from out in Kersey, Colorado – sold organic Peruvian purple potatoes, which are one of our favorite New World crops. Monroe offered their potatoes at a crazy price: $5 for half a pound; $7 for a pound; $10 for two pounds. I bought two pounds, because... Can you ever have enough organic Peruvian purple potatoes? They tasted as great as they looked with the roast and other vegetables.

The recipe below originally appeared in a slightly different form in The Fannie Farmer Cookbook (Marion Cunninghan and Jeri Laber, 1979 [12th edition], Alfred A. Knopf, page 159), where the authors advise: "The secret of tender pot roasts lies in keeping the heat below the boil. Violent boiling toughens meat fibers."

Ingredients
4 pound (more or less) boneless bottom round rump roast ($1.61 per pound, on sale), or another cut of beef for roasting
2 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil ($8.99 per 25.5 fluid ounces)
2 cup tomato juice ($1.99 per 46 fluid ounces)
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves ($2.79 per package), crumbled
handful of mini carrots ($1.99 per 1-pound package)
3-4 stalk celery ($1.49 per pound), cut into 3-inch sticks
2 medium-size red onions ($1.99 per bag of five onions), quartered

Procedure
Combine the flour, salt and pepper. Rub it all over the roast. Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven. When hot, add the roast and brown it on all sides.

Lower the heat. Add the tomato juice and thyme, and stir. Add the carrots, celery and onion. Cover and simmer for 3-3½ hours, turning once or twice during the cooking.