psmv5: Beef

This being the beef bought at Borough Market, as noticed at reference 1. So 2.946kg of beef, 1.112kg of bone, previously removed from beef.

Gravy action commenced around 18:00 on the Friday, boiling up the bones with onions, cabbage and a little carrot. We snacked on the bits of boiled meat at 21:00; tasty but not much of it. Strained stock looking good at this point. Left to cool, and a lid of fat had formed by 05:00, at which point it went into the fridge to harden off a bit. Removed later, as snapped above, a lot of it being used to make the roux.

White loaf from the Isle of Wight removed from freezer so as to be ready for gravy dipping, meat sandwiches, bread pudding & so on and so forth later.

It was hot and the greens bought a few days previously were a bit tired, so the first job of the morning was down to the market to see what they could do. The answer being not much, but I was able to buy a couple of bags of curly kale. A vegetable we have not had for a while, and from which I associate to Ireland and boiled bacon, but which I thought would do for the beef. Maybe the strong flavour would be a good foil to the delicate flavour of the beef?

Tie of ownership and into the pre-heated oven at 190°C at 11:15, aiming for 13:30 for forks in. Basted at 12:45, at which point it was coming on - but looked as if it needed the time to come.

Prepared the kale and consulted the Internet as to cooking. Where there was plenty of kale, but mainly featuring as a garnish to something complicated, rather than as a full-on vegetable in its own right. For that I had to visit the Tesco site for cooking time. My recollection was that it cooked down, a bit in the way of spinach or leaf beet, but not as much so, so do plenty. Health giving, fibre filled stalks chopped rather than discarded.

Gravy dipping a little late at 13:36. But the gravy was very good indeed. Apéritif visible back right.

Loosened the mash with a little of the fat snapped above, which made it crumbly rather than creamy. But it tasted well enough.

Beef spot on. The best we have had for a while.

Higher temperature is clearly the way forward, at least with this cut.

Even if the telephone was having trouble with the focus for this snap.

The lightly cooked carrots tasted better than they had raw, Sainsbury's apparently having changed supplier for their organic, 'taste the difference' carrots. Bite and texture good, flavour not so good, at least not when they were raw.

Did better with this one, getting on for half an hour later.

Having largely failed on the Internet, I checked a couple of cookbooks. Kale was absent from something calling itself the Covent Garden cook book but present in the Boston cook book. Where rather prolonged cooking was suggested. Rather too prolonged to my mind.

Waitrose Fleurie visible top right. The beef really was spot on.

At the end of the first shift.

Followed by gooseberry tart, finishing off the jam which from the island, noticed at reference 2.

With just a dab of warm custard. Just as well that BH takes rather more of it, as it would be a bit extravagant making it at all for the amount that I get through. But one does need it to cut the dryness of the pastry and the sweetness of the fruit. For some reason, this sweetness put me in mind of Armagnac, not that I had any to hand.

The first of what proved, over the days that followed, to be quite a lot of beef sandwiches. This one on the evening of the same day, after a stroll into town to shake down lunch a bit.

There had been lots of trolleys in town, but they were disqualified on two counts. First, the Ashley Centre had closed, so return would not have been possible. Second, I have yet to crack trolley collection when travelling with the rollator. B&M was still open though, with quite a few people still coming and going at 19:30.

More of the same the following day. Not as pretty as what you might be given in a restaurant, but actually almost as good cold as it had been hot. Note the crumbly appearance of the reheated mash. The kale was fresh, cooked a little more than the day previous, which made it more spinach like: slightly mushy, with lumps.