Where's the Beef

So you're getting 2 for 1 tonight.  Last night I had roasted beef inside of a salt crust from Alton Brown's Good Eats:  The Middle Years.  Overall, it tasted pretty good, unfortunately the level of cooking was on par with a giant hot mess.  I overcooked the beef by about 3+ levels.  It definitely ended up well done when I was shooting for rare.  A complete amateur mistake.   Oh well on to the pictures.

Here is the mise for the salt crust.  The bowl on the left includes egg whites, water and a mix of herbs that included thyme, marjoram, oregano, and rosemary.  The left bowl is flour, salt and pepper.

Here is the mise for the rest of the preparation.  The completed salt crust, the beef and more herbs.

Here is the salt crust, rolled, trimmed and topped with the herbs.

Prior to being wrapped in the salt crust the beef goes into a hot pan with peanut oil.  Note the beef was not seasoned at all, because the idea is that the crust will do all of the seasoning.

The completed seared beef.

The beef is now wrapped in the salt crust and ready to go into a 400 degree over for about 30 minutes.

The package over being pulled from the oven and resting for an additional 30 minutes.  The resting is from the idea that the meat will continue to cook and raise the internal temp an additional 15 degrees after being removed from the oven.

Here is the beef after being removed from the salt crust.

And the final presentation.  As you can see, it was just insanely overcooked and it makes me ashamed that I call myself a cook after doing something like that.  But the salt crust did it's job and seasoned the meat well.