Roast Beef (I think)

I really like Roast Beef. I grow up not having it, I don’t think my mum ever cooked it for me, but when I go to the likes of a sandwich shop, a roast beef and horseradish sandwich is one of my favorites. My mum did make Salt Beef, which I’ll try to make myself one day, but it just isn’t the same (in fact, it’s far better, but still, not the same).

By chance, I was browsing around ASDA with my flatmate, Russingleton, when I spied a ‘brisket’ and my juices got flowing about having having lovely roast beef sandwiches for a week.

I couldn’t find any recipes on the video websites by any of my favorite chefs, so I thought I would piece together what I thought I remembered from Telly and do something myself.

Here’s what you need.

• A bag of carrots
• 2 onions
• 2 Garlic bulbs
• Some port or red wine
• Some concentrated beef stock
• A brisket of beef.
• Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
• Mustard (Grainy or English)

Here’s what I did….

• Put the oven on full-whack
• Cut the onions into 6 or 8 pieces, all put together.
• Cut the carrots up into bite sized chunks.
• Cover the beef in Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
• Make up about 1½ pints of beef stock, I used some concentrated stuff because I thought it would taste stronger.
• Add three good glugs of port to the stock.
• Brown off the beef in a frying pan
• Cover the beef in grainy mustard, or English if want a fuller flavour.
• Rest veg in the pan, with 2 bulbs of garlic separated into cloves (I didn’t bother to peel it, life’s to short) cover  the veg with stock.
• Place the beef on top, cover with tin foil.
• Put the oven down to about 150ish.
• Cook it for about 3 hours, turning it every now-and-then.
• Leave to rest for 30 minutes, carve and serve.

Most of the stuff I used.

Brown off the beef.

Veg in a pan

Beef covered with mustard, veg covered in stock.

The liquid doubled ! Oops, oh well, makes a nice soup.

Looks good, but was way too tough.

The soup bit is amazing though.

The garlic is nice and squidgy, but the other veg was too hard.

A lovely christmas prezzy.

Have I come up trumps, or have I come up trumps. Oh boy, this is a great recipe. There was a bit of flaffing about, cutting up all the vegetables (and braving ASDA a few days before Christmas), but I think this one is worth it, and it makes so much that if you give 3/4 of it away as a gift, you’ll still have enough to last you a good while. There is a Sweet Chili sauce I buy from the local butchers, “So!Go sweet chili”, it’s about £4 a bottle, and although it lasts a little 200ml bottle. It’s great stuff, but if I was charging that for this stuff, I’d be a millionaire after the 5th batch, and let me tell you, it’s a damn sight better.

This is the first time I’ve made a Jam/chutney/thinggy. If It sets, then I’m calling it a jam, if it doesn’t, it’s a sauce… I’ll let you know in the morning.

What you’ll need….

• 8 ‘pointer’ red peppers (they’re nicer than normal peppers)
• 10ish Red Chilis (don’t worry, it won’t blow your head off)
• A bundle of Spring Onion.
• Two red onions
• A bottle of Red Wine Vinegar (350ml)
• 1kg of Preserve Sugar (or I hear you can use Golden Caster Sugar).
• A nice thumb of ginger
• A haa-aaa-UGE pan.
• Some jars to keep it in.
• Two ‘things’ of Cherry Tomatoes… about 500g.
• Hand Blitzer

What to do

• De-seed the Chilis, you can just cut the top off, slice them in half and use a spoon to scrape out the seeds.
• ‘Rusticly’ fine-slice all the various vegetables, (if you’ve got a blender, it’ll make life easier, but I don’t, so I did it by hand)
• Shove half of all the veg, sugar and vinegar into the pan and mix it about. If you do it in that order, the vinegar will melt the sugar, rather than taking up so much room.
• Do as above with the second half, in the same pan. There is to much there to stir around if you do it in one go.
• Put the heat on under the pan, and let it boil, then put the heat down at let it simmer for 50 minutes, making sure you give it a good stir every 5 minutes.
• After then, give it a little taste, if needs a little bit of this or that, add it. Personally, I thought it tasted perfect.
• Let the mixture call down a little bit, about another hour.
• Get a hand blitzer and blitz it down a bit, but keep it slightly course, it’s about getting a good mix.
• Get some jars, I needed 4 coffee jars and two bigger ones.
• The idea is to sterilize them, so you fill them half way up with water and microwave them for about 2 minutes, making sure that you’ve removed all the labels as in the ones that I used had metal in them.
• Fill the jars up if the Sweet Chili goodness, and enjoy =)

Cut off the top, slice in half, use a teaspoon to scrape out insides

8 Chillis, but mild and not hot.

Use a rough chop on everything, or even better, a food proccessor.

It's a lot of Red Pepper, but it's good.

Bung it in, in two halfs, to make life easier (I did it in one and it was too much)

oops, forgot the tomartoes, never mind, they'll break down when cooking so don't bother chopping... to much hassle.

Ok, I made a mess, i'll clean up in the morning.

Use the blitzer to get the consistancy you like.

A lovely christmas prezzy.

Doesn't look amazing, but tastes great.

Pad Gonz, it’s like Pad Thai, only not quite. The whole thing was easy to make, took less than 10 minutes, most of the stuff I already had in the fridge. I’ll be honest with you, I forgot a few bits as I was cooking it, I was going to incorporate Peanut Butter to give it that Satay’ish touch, I still think it would have worked, but never mind, I’ll try that next time. I’m separating this into two recipes because the chicken part would work with any sauce. I used to really like those packets of Chinese’y sauce you can get in the shops, but now I find they all taste synthetic… I promise I’m not a snob when it comes to food, but I really do find they taste of chemicals.

What you’ll need –
The Chicken Part

• Chicken breast. (it’s cheaper with the skin on, which is easy to take off and you can always use it for Chicken Scratchings)
• A couple of beaten eggs
• Some flour
• Some sesame Seeds (if you want).
• Some Sun Flower oil
• A pinch of salt, or some seasoning (maybe something like Mild Curry Powder would work?)
• A wok, and some Kitchen Paper

What to do –
The Chicken Part

• Cut up the chicken into bite-sized strips, the smaller they are, the crisper, but less succulent.
• Beat an egg in a bowl, sprinkle some Sesame Seeds in there
• Cover the chicken in flour with a pinch of salt or seasoning
• Heat up the oil in the Wok, the hotter the better. Pour a drop of the egg in, if it’s sizzling, then you’re hot enough.
• Dip the chicken in the egg, then put in the oil.
• When the chicken coating is slightly brown, turn it around. If they all start to stick together, like a pancake/doughnut-with-chicken thing, separate them up.
• When you think they’re all done, cut the thickest one in two, if that’s cooked, then the rest should be.
• Leave them to rest on some kitchen paper.

What you’ll need –
The Stir Fry part

• Honey
• Dark Soy Sauce
• Peanuts and/or Cashew nuts
• A chopped chili (I like the mild ones)
• Some chopped up red pepper
• Chopped up red onion
• Chopped up Spring Onion
• The fried chicken from above (if you want)
• The left over egg (from above, if you want)
• Some noodles, straight-to-wok is fine.
• Some sunflower oil (about half from above if you want… empty the half into a cup or something to dispose of later)
• A wok

What you need to do –
The Stir Fry part.

• Chop up your veg, chop up the nuts
• Pour a drop of oil into the wok and heat it up.
• Put the chili and spring onions in the wok (from here onwards, shake the pan around every 30 seconds or so)
• Put in the Red Onion and Red Pepper
• Then add in a generous drop of honey and a good few dashes of soy sauce, most (but not all) of the nuts, and the sesame seeds.
• Add the noodles (and chicken from above)
• Give it one last shake-up and pour onto a plate.
• If you’ve got the left over egg from the chicken above, pour that into the wok and keep on stirring so you get almost like a scrambled egg.
• Put the stuff back off the plate, into the scrambled egg, shake it all up, and put it back.
• Sprinkle some chopped nuts on top
• ….. enjoy =)

Just bung it in.

Egg and Sessimi seeds to cover the chicken and make the scrambled egg thinggy.

Fry up that chicken - Flour, Egg, Sesame Seeds in sunflower oil

Really really nice, works with most sti-frys

The noodles take on the flavours and colour of the sauce.

The scrambled egg thing works well, soaks up the sauce and gives a nice texture.

Doesn't look amazing, but tastes great.