Balsamic Roasted Beef

I’m back! 🙂

After a month of eating mostly frozen or fast food, I’m delighted to be getting back into the swing of things with cooking!  I’ve missed it so :’)

Is anyone else thinking about their goals for 2012 yet?  I used to love compiling large lists of New Year Resolutions, but I’d be too over-ambitious and leave myself disappointed.  As I age (rather ungracefully… and very reluctantly), I tend to shy away from unrealistic expectations, however, I do have a few general goals for next year, where the wonderful world of food is concerned:

 

  • Use my cookbooks more!  They’re starting to collect dust and I need to break the habit of searching online for recipes, when I have a plethora of inspiration at home.

 

  • Improve my cooking skills!  You won’t see me on Masterchef just yet, but I would like to become a more confident cook and try new techniques.

 

  • Try new ingredients!  This one won’t be too difficult as I’ve been living under the proverbial ingredient rock for the majority of my 26 years on this Earth.

 

Too impatient for 2012, I’ve dived straight in to my goals, having used a recipe from one of my cookbooks for this week’s post: Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Cookbook “How Easy Is That?”

I don’t make nearly enough roast dinners!  I should definitely start doing it more though, especially when they taste as lovely as this 🙂

As always, I’ve adapted the recipe and method to suit myself.  Here’s what I did:

 

 

 

 

 

Ingredients:

 

900g beef silverside joint

2 x tbsp dijon mustard

1 x tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 x tsp coarse sea salt

1 x tsp crushed peppercorns

 

I mixed the mustard, vinegar, salt & pepper in a small bowl, till it looked like this:

 

 

 

 

 

I then spread it all over my beef joint, till it looked like this:

 

 

 

 

 

I covered the dish with foil and roasted for 1 hour and 20 minutes, basting it with its own juices half-way through.  I then left it to rest on the worktop (wrapped in foil) for ten minutes, to let the juices go back into the meat.

The cooking time will depend on the size of your beef and how well you like it done.  My beef had a teency bit of pink in the middle, which is exactly what I was aiming for 🙂

I served it up with some (Aunt Bessie’s – oh the shame!) roast potatoes and broccoli.  I made a gravy by adding the meat juices (sieved) to 300ml boiled water with a beef Oxo cube in it.  Simple and delish!

 

 

 

 

 

If it was for a Sunday lunch/dinner, I’m sure I would have added some Yorkshire puddings… and mash… and honey glazed carrots… mmm.  We had this on Monday night though; it’s just not the same! 🙂

The beef was very tasty, but you couldn’t really taste the balsamic vinegar.  I’m not surprised, to be honest, with only 1 tbsp for the whole joint (her recipe calls for a 1.5kg piece of beef as well!), I might try and use 3 or 4 tbsp if I do it again 🙂

Next Week:  I’ll be trying chicken liver pate!

Take care 🙂 x

9 Comments

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  3. Phil in the Kitchen

    Nice combination of flavours on that beef. I’m very impressed that you’ve got some food resolutions for next year already. I’ve only got as far as try not to break anything or poison anybody as yet.

    1. Catherine

      I love her too; I could watch Barefoot Contessa programmes all day (and sometimes do… I admit it). The pate was very easy to make; you should give it a go! 🙂

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