Hot Smoked Salmon Bruschetta

I wish I did spend all my time nipping round farmers markets and picking choice hand grown vegetables and rare breed meat but unfortunately I don't  I tend to buy the majority of my food, like most people, from Tescos, Sainsburys, M&S or suchlike. But that's not all that bad and one thing that seems to have slowly risen to prominance on the poorly stocked shelves of the supermarket fish counter is the hot smoked salmon fillet. It's become something of a regular on our shopping list (or Chopin Liszt as we so amusingly call it when in humorous mood),

Tonight demanded a nice quick and fresh meal as it's so lovely outside and the sun is setting ever later. Hordes of swifts are swarming in the skies above Bedford, returning as every year with their little cries of relentless energy. The atmosphere cries out for fresh, simple and tasty meals to match the season and complement the lift of late spring.

First off finely chop some peppers and onion and add to a pan to cook slowly while popping the oven on to heat up to 200 degrees. The onions and peppers I used slowly and gently caramelised but to be honest you can do them for as long as you want. Short and sharp they'll be a bit more crisp and long and slow they'll be soft and sweet. Either will be very suitable here.If caremelising, it's worth just adding a dash of water to the pan every so often to prevent oxidisation on the surface of the peppers. Whatever you do though, don't season them while cooking, this will drive the water out and dry them too much. Seasoning them once cooked is much nicer as you get the flavour and moisture within with a salty crunch outside.

While these vegetables are softening get a little bit of cucumber, maybe a quarter of one per two people and slice off the outer skin then slice the remaining inner flesh thinly. Take these slices and pop into a bowl and soak them in white wine vinegar and leave to one side. Cucumber in vinegar is something of a family favorite side dish to salmon that will always be reminiscent of my youth. The absolute master of adding acidity to cucumber slices is my father but here we'll use it in a slightly different way which will become apparent later on.

Once the oven is hot, take a nice cheap, non farmers maket, plastic wrapped, par-baked baguette or ciabatta. Slice it in half and pop on a baking tray to expose a sliced side upwards on the tray. At the same time take a couple of our friend Mr Tesco's hot smoked salmon fillets and pop into the oven with the bread. They'll both take about ten minutes.

The last thing to do with our vegetables is add a little herbal flavour. I rather like the french approach to take a bunch of fresh herbs and add variety of flavour but concentrate of the key herb you want to push to the front of your dish. I used a big bunch of parsley and a similarly large amount of thyme. It was a citrus thyme but not a true lemon thyme which can be over-powering somteimes. A little bit of sage and a handful of chervil was added to the mix then chopped up and added to soften into the onion and pepper mix, with the heat turned off, preserving the flavour. This is a great way to add herbs, just add into a sauce or dish when you turn the heat off. It leaves enough temperature to wilt the leaves and make a homogenous mixture but not too much to take the flavour away. Herbs like parsley, chervil or tarragon will lose the vast majority of flavour within minutes of being cooked. Chervil in particular hates being cooked but is such a lovely delicate and rare flavour that I can only imagine has fallen out of favour with kitchens because people just kill it off all too easily.

Ten minutes in and we're ready to go. Plating up is easy: Take a couple of half breads on the plate. Spoon the caremelised peppers and onion onto the bread. Then place the salmon fillet onto the top. Finally, take our vinegary cucumber slices and strain the excess vinegar off them. Lay the slices on the salmon then  top with some fresh leaves.

Finally drizzle some olive oil over the dish. Use a good olive oil of course. I've been using a nice Olive oil with a gimmick that I bought from my local Italian shop. I t's wrapped in gold foil to prevent oxidisation by sunlight!

You'll hopefully find that when you slice in, to eat the dish, you've made a dressing with the oil and the vinegar that's soaked into the cucumber. The only difference being that the acidity that is there presents itself on the bite rather than the tongue. This makes for an extra little bit of zing and excitement to our supermarket summer supper......

Warm salad of asparagus, brie and bacon

Sorry it’s been a little while since my last post. I didn’t in fact even intend to write about my little Sunday lunch until I’d eaten the first mouthful, hence the somewhat rough photograph. Yet again I am in a situation of seeing what’s in the kitchen then making something with it. It being May, good asparagus is easy to come by. I have a nice bunch and a fresh and simple lunch dish on a relaxing Sunday seems a good idea. When the sun is shining  the idea of a traditional heavy roast dinner seems unappetising and more fresh and elegant dishes are called for to help with the enjoyment of our day of rest.

Asparagus doesn’t like to be overcomplicated. It has a distinctive flavour that is so fantastic on its own it needn’t be combined with strong ingredients. What I always find asparagus does need however is something salty, something creamy and something acidic. The following dish combines all these things and is so astoundingly easy that you can whip it up in ten minutes or so.

First of all I make a dressing. You could make a bog standard vinaigrette which would be more than adequate. For mine I use a teaspoon of French mustard, the juice of half a lemon, a large tablespoon of mayonnaise and a glug of good olive oil, seasoned with salt an pepper.

I then pop some streaky bacon on an oven tray into a hot oven, cooking it until crispy then removing to dry on some kitchen roll. I turn the oven off but close the remaining heat in for reasons to be revealed later on.

While the bacon is crisping up I steam some asparagus just enough to be hot and crunchy. When done, I place four spears of asparagus on a plate, then pop a few slices of brie on them before layering another four spears on top. This plate can then go into the still warm oven for about three or four minutes just to allow the brie to ooze. It’s important here also to “ooze” and not melt. If it melts it will separate and that’ll make it go oily on the plate.

Once “oozing” you can top with the bacon rashers and drizzle with some dressing. I garnished with a chopped mix of freshly picked parsley, chervil and tarragon.

A lovely fresh and tasty lunch for a sunny Sunday…

"Fast food" surf and turf with aspargus...and chips

Wednesday night is pub night. After getting home, reading the kids a bedtime story and putting them to bed there’s not much time for dinner. The pub food is generally defrosted, microwave and/or deep fried crap so a quick supper is generally the best option.

I don’t generally plan a meal when time is tight, it’s more a question of what’s available. On this occasion we had a fine selection of ingredients that needed eating before passing their use-by dates. The particular fridge dwellers that required rehoming were a sirloin steak, some asparagus and some king prawns. Now asparagus and prawns are a good match, prawns and steak are modern classic in a sense but asparagus and steak? Not so sure…What I decided upon was to make best use of the commonality of flavour relationships between the little triangle of ingredients.

When you think of good steak sauces and good asparagus sauces there’s quite a similarity; steak and Bearnaise, asparagus and Hollandaise, buttery sauces, mustard flavours and such like so perhaps this might actually work quite well together.

However, enough thinking, time was very much of the essence and a quick turnaround required. The children went upstairs at around 7:15pm so having some foresight the oven was turned on to heat up during storytime. Back downstairs at 7:30 and needing to leave the house by about ten to eight, time was relatively tight. What you are about to experience is some great fast food! Recipes can be written in many different ways but my fast chronological method is illustrated below. The race is on…

19:30pm

Pan on the hob, melting some butter

19:31pm

Stir in flour starting the basis of a white sauce
Kettle on boiling some water for the asparagus

19:32pm

Gradually stir in some milk to make the white sauce, slowly

19:33pm

Season steak with salt, pepper and a little olive oil rubbing in
Pop oven chips in

19:34pm

Stir mustard, cheese and a dash of vinegar into the white sauce

19:36pm

Pop outside, pick some fresh tarragon from the garden
Keep stirring

19:37pm

Pop steak onto very hot griddle
Add boiling water to pan for asparagus

19:39pm

Flip steak

19:40pm

Flip steak
Stir sauce, add tarragon, king prawns and dash of paprika

19:41pm

Flip steak and turn 90 degrees to give grid shaped browning marks
Give oven chips a shuffle

19:42pm

Flip steak for last time
Add asparagus to pan

19:43pm

Remove steak to plate

19:44pm

Drain asparagus

19:45pm

Plate up

19:46pm

EAT

19:55pm

GO TO PUB…..

This was a tasty filling supper but wasn’t of course an amazing gourmet delight. However, this sauce was a good little discovery. With Asparagus season on its way I feel it worth mentioning. Very basically, it breaks down as follows:

Make a béchamel base sauce. I always go for the rule of more butter, less flour when doing this. When you add the flour to the butter, it’s bound to be lumpy later on unless it has the consistency of cream before the milk is added. You can soon rescue a situation of having added too much flour by melting a bit more butter in. The butter is also the prime initial flavour ingredient so bear this in mind when making it.

Once you’ve added most of the milk in, add a dash of white wine. Not too much otherwise it will become a white wine tasting sauce, just enough to sit in the background.

Then melt in a little cheese, again, not to make it cheesy to give a less powdery and more creamy texture and to allow a bit of a glaze to the surface.

The final two key ingredients are mustard and white wine vinegar. These two things will give it a flavour slightly reminiscent of a hollandaise and needed to be added carefully, dash by dash.

Herbs and spices are the final things. I used fresh tarragon and paprika. Tarragon is a lovely flavour but must be added right at the end or you’ll lose the flavour. Paprika gives a little hint of spice and really adds to the colour making it look less bland.

I added prawns to this but I wouldn’t really consider them part of the sauce. You might as well pour the sauce on prawns as its complementing them and they’re not really a flavouring ingredient.

The final mix has flavour, a nice bit of acidity but isn’t overly spiced or flavoured such that it overtakes the flavours of what it’s served with. Above all else though, it’s quick. I hope you enjoy…

Chinese Water Deer with Rosti and Chestnut Mushrooms

People traditionally think of eating game in the late autumn and winter months but there are certain species on seasons outside of this time. Pigeon and rabbit are available all year round as is my personal favourite squirrel. Hares only have a short closed season but they’re generally only available during the winter months. Deer seasons are generally different for the males and females which are normally known as “stags and hinds” or “bucks and does” depending upon species. There isn’t a month of the year in which some deer or other can’t be shot so it’s something game lovers can enjoy all year round.

In this particular dish I’ve used the Chinese Water Deer. The season for these ends on the 31^st of March so my particular specimen has been shot at the end of the season and is in prime condition. I happened to acquire this whole deer from a really pleasant and very experienced gamekeeper who culls various deer species for the local farmers to help keep the populations in check. Just spending half an hour with this man made me realise he wasn’t a “hunter” or “stalker”. This was a man who truly understood his local environment. His intimate knowledge of the behaviour, whereabouts and breeding seasons of all the deer on his land would have put the most educated zoologist to shame. He understood the fine balance between nature and farming that exists in our countryside and it is people like this that do more for the conservation of our indigenous populations than anyone else.

The Chinese Water Deer is a species not native to the British Isles, nowhere near in fact. Their native habitat is by the banks of the Yangtzee river in China where they lurk among the rushes, coming out to feed during dusk and dawn. They are a very primitive form of deer in evolutionary terms with the males bearing no antlers, instead they have tusks much like a wild boar, yet they stand with a raised hind quarter and run almost like a hare when disturbed. They were kept in captivity in Britain but escaped in the late nineteenth century from Woburn Abbey Estate which is not far from where I live. From here they have dispersed across small pockets of East Anglia but due to perhaps being selective about their environment they have never gone as far and wide as the Reeves Muntjac which is much more widespread across the UK.  They are in an odd conservation situation because while we know they are an invasive species and should not by rights be in the UK but they are becoming increasingly short in numbers in their native China. The attitude of both Natural England and The British Deer Society appears to be to allow a moderate but stable population here that could one day help repopulate the Chinese one.

Opening my bag of beautifully butchered deer I have a selection of cuts. Two upper hind legs with bone in, two upper fore legs, boned and rolled, a full saddle with loin fillets and two bags containing both neck and shank meat, diced for stewing. The smell of the various cuts of meat even raw is quite sublime. There’s a fresh but rich aroma that is far more appealing than even the best beef or lamb.

As time is limited I opt for a cut to cook quickly which is obviously a cut from the saddle. Much like a fillet of beef, this will be tender and tasty but will not take to over-cooking. Beef fillet or for that matter the fillets of a larger deer such as a red or fallow deer are much thicker and are generally cooked cut off the main piece of meat. A small dear such as this or a muntjac would only make small discs in comparison so I have opted to cook a section as a roll and cut off to medallions once done. This deer itself was to quote the stalker “in very good nick” with plenty of body fat so I took some of the relatively neutral tasting fat from inside of the abdomen to use as a cooking fat, hopefully keeping the flavours in and not introducing another ingredient.

Such a great piece of meat doesn’t need to be over complicated. Venison has flavour and does not therefore require lots of sauces or marinades, especially when genuinely wild and not farmed like much of that on the supermarket shelves or restaurant tables. A wild animal has a much wider diet and therefore encompasses all of those elements of its diet in the meat.  I therefore wanted to provide a simple accompaniment that worked with the flavours and not against them. I opted for a simple chestnut mushroom sauce with a potato rosti accompaniment. Humble salt and black pepper will make enough seasoning to give a genuine complement to the flavour of the meat.

The meat itself will take very little cooking therefore the rosti needs to be done first. Traditionally rosti should be made with potatoes par-boiled the night before. My quick decision to make this meal has no such foresight but I have a small trick up my sleeve; you can quickly par boil some potatoes, preferably waxy varieties then plunge into an ice bath for half an hour to emulate letting them rest overnight. Peeled and grated they can then be plunged into some hot fat. I used rape seed oil which gives little extra to the flavour but knowing the fields where the deer was shot, the standard crop rotation of wheat and rape gives that little incentive to think that such a wonderful creature had bounced among the yellow flowers which now can make a part of its side dish. Simply peeled and grated cold you can just throw the potato into hot oil and gradually toss it. Rosti has a wonderful habit of letting you know how well it’s doing; as it’s cooking it gradually sticks together so you can feel at what point it is ready to join0 together into a “cake” that you can turn over into a single entity. Once at the sticky stage I stuff mine into a metal ring and continue to fry at a lower heat in this to brown either side. Holding it in this shape helps the excess oil drain away, preventing it becoming oily and aiding to its shape on the plate.

While the rosti gently browns the main event is ready to cook. The lovely flavour of the deer is too good to waste so rather than dilute the flavour with another oil I diced some of the clean hard internal cavity fat and rendered it down in the pan to then fry the loin. Once very hot I seared the fillet for about five minutes all over, turning three or four times. Once done, it was removed to rest for a while and some finely chopped chestnut mushrooms added to the pan. During the cooking process I dropped a little boiling water into the mix to deglaze the venison juices and assist the quick softening of the mushrooms along with a tiny taste of garlic. Once happily softened I added a little cornflour and milk to quickly make a sauce.

Plating up was a simple affair of putting the rosti in the centre surrounded with sliced medallions of the venison dribbled with the mushroom sauce. My presentation lacks a great deal but in this case I really don’t care. Flavour beats image…

The result was far better than I ever could have imagined. The meat itself was truly sublime. The tongue touched each mouthful and rebounded with a wonderful  concentrated meat flavour then evry bite softly pressed through each medallion with no resistance , tender beyond the finest steak. The rosti offered a crisp complement to the soft meat and balanced the texture of the meal. Above all the decision not to flavour anything with herbs or spices was truly vindicated. The very basic ingredients of venison, potato, mushrooms, salt and pepper were more than enough to give true delights beyond overcomplicated dishes. The lesson learned above all else is to take a quality ingredient and crown it rather than drown it.

My favorite cookery reference

As you may guess while reading any of my blog posts, I like creative cooking. I like to create my own recipes and work with different ideas, techniques and ingredients. Creativity isn’t generally plucked out of thin air. Most, if not all good ideas and inventions are the fusion of existing concepts or principles into something new. My principles of cooking are largely based upon researching, experimenting and tasting. I’m not afraid to admit that much of it can be close to revolting, such dishes as “coot curry” and “pan fried moorhen” will never be repeated again but without trying you’ll never know.

Good reference is however vital when trying out new ideas. I don’t really go in for recipe books per se; I prefer to read books about food. It’s actually one of my favourite parts of the cookery process to go out and buy/find/pick/shoot some particular ingredient and then research its cooking times and temperatures and what flavours it might work with, then come up with something myself. Below are my top five and from them I hope you too can get some of the same pleasures of an evening, raw ingredients on the worktop, book open and glass of wine on the go, ready to make something new, distinctive and your own. Here are my desert island books...

Larousse Gastronomique

It will be no great surprise to see this great encyclopaedia of cookery at the top of my list. There is virtually nothing edible that isn’t written about in this great book (perhaps the lack of coot or moorhen in it should have made me think twice). It gives great advice, recipe snippets and practical as well as aesthetic information on virtually everything. It is occasionally a little Franco-centric as you might imagine but who’s to complain when the French make such good food?

Culinary Artistry

This is a fantastic gem of a book for creative cooks. It has all sorts of information, recipes and techniques but its greatest asset is an amazing reference section which for any given ingredient gives you a number of complementary ingredients to go with it. This is invaluable in those situations where you may have A, B & C in the fridge and X, Y and Z in the cupboard and you’re wondering what you could do with them. Hey presto you can have a good if not magical combination.

Working the Plate

I’m appalling at presenting food well but I do realise how important it is. I would love to be better at it and I think it’s probably one of those things gained either through an intrinsic artistic talent or a stint at a professional cookery school, neither of which I am lucky enough to have had. This book does however make some really great presentation techniques available to the clumsy handed chef such as me. Even if you’re not a really keen cook and just want to impress friends at a dinner party, there are some great ideas to get people eating with their eyes as well as their mouths.

Practical Professional Cookery

You can be the best creative chef with all the new ideas in the world but there are some classic things you just have to know about. This book deals with virtually every one of them in detail and without any frills or subjectivity. It is really a manual for professional chefs and very much based upon the classic French repertoire. You can’t help but love a fillet de sole “bon femme”, a consommé, a sauce béarnaise or indeed any of the multitude of staples included. The quantities are occasionally mammoth with “serves 16” or “makes about ten litres” not uncommon but with a little work you can scale it down to your requirement. Be wary that it is very French so for “rare” read “still mooing”.

The Dairy Book of Home Cookery

I’m afraid I have to eat my words a little on my last selection. I used to somewhat look down my nose at this book which has always been my wife’s cookery bible. Being a little superior in the kitchen department how could I possibly take notice of this mother’s favourite recipe book? It is indeed full of really basic pies and pastas and crumbles with all oven cooked recipes having microwave equivalents but it is absolutely brilliant for so many basics. I don’t have a catalogue like memory for weights and proportions for things like Yorkshire puddings, custard, meringues and pastry but this book is guaranteed to have any basic staple included. I genuinely think this is like a modern day Mrs Beeton and with so many cookery books out there concentrating on foreign food, fancy food, fish, meat, puddings, healthy food or whatever else, it’s so refreshing to have something about basic, boring, wonderful food.  Over the years I have found myself using it more and more. It is so simple and our own copy bears “new edition for the nineties” proudly on the front cover and shows a good deal of wear and tear.

Homemade Chorizo

When looking at what we are prepared to make in our own kitchens, there are some barriers which people find really hard to break. Few of us for example make our own cheese or yoghurt. Making your own bread or pastry is probably the greatest extent to which many keen cooks are prepared to break this invisible barrier. But why is this? One such area of products that we seem to find it hard to persuade ourselves to get involved with is cured meats. There are pitfalls such as a perceived risk of spoiling, worries about temperature and moisture and more than anything else, the fact that you have to wait so long to see if you’ve been successful or not. A 24 month Parma ham has to be the ultimate “slow food” in this respect. As a lover of all thinks salty and made of pork I’ve been very happy to give it a go. Getting involved in curing isn’t so much a one-off recipe to write about but an on-going adventure so I’ll be writing about some of these curing adventures over the next few weeks and months and possibly longer!

Today I’m going to be writing about one of the greatest successes which was my homemade chorizo. A chorizo isn’t really different from any other salami, it’s just defined by its spices, particularly Pimenton. When I set out to make a salami of some sort I hadn’t really decided upon chorizo but I’d picked up some lovely Pimenton de la Vera from a nice little delicatessen in Olney. One of the wonderful things about salami making is that in one sense you are very constrained by exact proportions of ingredients. But when it comes to flavours added, you have a complete free reign to experiment. Any salami works out pretty much as follows:

·         Approx 80% lean pork (ideally shoulder)

·         Approx 20% pork fat (back or belly)

·         2.6% salt – for hygiene reasons I use a proper curing salt with added nitrates and nitrites

·         0.6% starter culture bacteria – not essential but adds another line of defence against bugs

On top of this you add whatever you want to personalise your home cured sausage. Further personalisation comes in the coarseness of the meat inside.

For my Chorizo I hand chopped the lean pork very fine. This was tedious but even with a coarse mincer attachment I think it’s hard to get the right consistency for “chunky” salami. The fat was however minced to allow for a more even distribution. While we’d all happily find big meaty chunks in a slice of salami, a slice of mostly fat isn’t that appetizing. When mincing fat it’s much better to partially freeze it beforehand. This way the blade will slice through it correctly and it’s much easier to do and to handle. I only have a little £20 hand operated plastic mincer and it can be arduous at times.

The meat and fat need to be well mixed together along with the salt and starter culture, it pays to go over the top here. Some people recommend kneading the mince like a dough but I think with smaller quantities this can all be done in the bowl.

I do a full mix of the basic meat and salt combination before adding any flavourings at all. This is probably not necessary but it does give peace of mind that it’s all thoroughly mixed through.

Now at this point you get to the fun and creative part of the process. It’s time to mix up your flavours and personalise your salami to make it far better than anything you’d ever buy in the shops. For this particular creation I used the following flavourings into 1Kg of meat:

·         Two tsp of pimento

·         One tsp fennel seeds

·         One glass of rioja

·         One very small clove of garlic, crushed

·         One tsp whole black peppercorns

You have to be careful with flavouring cured meats. Remember, this is not being cooked. All of these flavours will be effectively eaten raw. Think about how much garlic you’d put into a salad compared to a pasta sauce. Be subtle. I reckon you need to use around a half or less of the quantity that you’d use normally, especially when it comes to garlic.

I can’t stress how important it is to stay clean and hygienic throughout this process. I must have washed hands and cleaned surfaces at least twenty times while making this. This is never more important that when carrying out the final stage of stuffing the sausage.

For this I used beef middles. These come vacuum packed and salted and you need to soak them in plenty of fresh water before use for at least a couple of hours. They create a nice thick sausage and the skins are strong so they will allow you to make a good long salami.

The stuffing process is quite fun. I actually managed to get a whole kilogram into one salami. The main thing to remember is to avoid any air pockets and keep a good consistency throughout. I use special culinary string to tie up both ends. Again, you can’t be too cautious with hygiene.

The drying process starts with one day in a warm damp place. This sounds counterintuitive but what this does is to get the starter bacteria in their going and multiplying to protect the meat from spoiling. At this stage the salami looks relatively pale and unappetizing. Here's the unfinished article, with "Ham" from Toy Story looking on....

It’s then transferred to a cool place for drying. I use a section of attic that’s always about the same temperature as outside. This will only work in the winter but that’s when salami making traditionally took place. It’s important not to be too dry, 75% relative humidity is ideal, if it’s too dry the salamis will dry too quickly, hardening on the outside but not curing properly inside. In the case of my curing area, it’s very close to a cold water tank so the humidity remains around this ideal figure.

Knowing when it’s ready isn’t easy. The best way is to keep a note of the weight of the salami. Once it has lost about a third of its weight it should be fine. In my case this took a little less than two months.

The result? Really good and quite surprising.  It’s much more moist and soft than shop bought salami with more meaty flavours. The spices came through nicely although I think I’d need to at least double the pimento content to make it just like a real Spanish chorizo. The peppercorns and fennels seeds had softened just enough to give a nice little explosion when biting into them. In future I think I’ll try and make more at once. There’s a lot of setting up and indeed washing up involved so it would pay to have a real mammoth session.

Perhaps the most reassuring thing is that there have been been no illnesses, tummy bugs or ill effects of any kind among those who have sampled it and feedback has been good. I can’t recommend making your own enough and it really isn’t hard. Unless you have a dedicated fridge for curing you may wish to wait until next winter though. These guys make an excellent starter kit and cheap mincer. The starter kit contains enough for about 80Kg of salami so it should keep you going for a while and offers great value for money.

Next time its home cured Guanciale, Italian Pig Cheek Bacon…

So what was the result? It was a pleasant afternoon, one of the beauties of slow cooking is that you can get on with other things and just occasionally go and check on your food or even completely forget about it if you’re confident enough. The garden was weeded and mulched and the lawn mowed. The kitchen floor was also swept and hoovered twice owing to my wonderful daughter plodding in and out of the garden in fairy costume and mud caked wellies.

The cooking process wasn’t quite what I had expected. 75 degrees on my slow oven was too low. It was barely warming it. After about two hours I had the impression that the beef was getting little more than a light steaming so I cranked it up to 100. A big change perhaps but still a very low heat nonetheless. It stayed there for about an hour and a half longer, then I dropped it down for two more hours in the knowledge of when we were likely to be eating. It was a very slow juggle between oven temperature and meat thermometer, neither of mine I fear are accurate or calibrated. Using my environmental meter that I use for work against it I think I’m about seven degrees out!

Close to eating time I had another oven very hot at 240 degrees, ready for Yorkshire puddings cooked in the dripping of a roast a fortnight ago. I did think the beef looked a little anaemic and needed a bit of a crust so I decided to be brave and give it a quick blast to brown the outside. This is completely against everything anyone is ever told regarding roasting beef where you start hot and roast on a falling heat. However I did it purely for aesthetic reasons and I wasn’t disappointed in the end. Less than ten minutes was enough to finish it off but in retrospect this could just as easily have been done right at the start of the cooking process and might have helped keep some extra flavour in but I didn't find it lacking any. A nice half an hour of resting was allowed before the moment of truth.

Carving a roast you have never done before makes you rather nervous. Beef rib isn’t that easy to carve either. But the result was immediately apparent and quite divine. Pink from the centre, right to the edge but not bleeding anywhere. And this was after nearly six hours in the oven. The herb flavours of the thyme, rosemary and bay leaf still tasted fresh and leafy and really permeated the meat. But more than anything, it was ultra-tender and ultra-tasty. There’s no need for gravy when the flavour has remained in the meat rather than trickling out into the roasting tray. I made a small amount of jus with any fluid that had come out along with a little red wine and some mushroom ketchup. It was then served with an almighty array of roast spuds (my wife’s recipe), cauliflower cheese, Yorkshire puddings, peas and some horseradish sauce. A nice Shiraz-Cabernet that my brother had dropped off a while ago complemented it well.

As perfect as it was for me, a few little alterations did have to be made. My son has a strange aversion to any roast dinners so it had to be renamed “roast dinosaur”, Apatosaurous to be exact. We also had a guest whose age is still measured in months. I’d happily give such rare meat to my own children on the basis of my knowledge of pasteurisation temperatures, but a little portion was duly heated a little further for the sake of our youngest guest. In terms of weight consumed against own body weight, she ate more than anyone and was the perfect dinner guest.

I was in beef heaven. I will do this again.