Three ribs

Ordered up from Ben the Butcher of reference 1 on the day of the pork belly of reference 2, collected a few days later, along with a kilogram ration of bones.

I did not fancy carrying a three ribber from Upper High Street, so it was a day of the trolley, snapped above loaded up. I had learned that Ben, after getting on for ten years, had decided to step back from the front line - although it was not clear what exactly this meant. Was he letting his lease and shop out to new management? Was his chiller display cabinet for his beef still there? Was the quality going to suffer?

I have not checked, but maybe the same length stint as Ella the Baker put in in Ashburton. Maybe ten years running a small, speciality, retail business is enough.

Whatever the case, the beef had been chined, which I did not want - but perhaps I had forgotten to give specific instructions on that point, although I did say no trimming or otherwise messing about. I associated to gardeners and builders who are rather keen on doing what they want to do, regardless of what you say you want them to do. But they did remember about my bones, which had been tucked away under the counter somewhere.

Took in a few blackberries on my way through Court Recreation Ground. Rather good as I recall.

Started boiling up the stock at around 14:00: the bones plus some carrots and onions. Called it a day a little before 18:00. A few bits of meat on the bones, plus some white bloomer from M&S bought that afternoon, provided hot meat sandwiches of a sort.

Next morning, time to study the precedents. That is to say the Radiation Cook Book snapped above, plus references 3 and 4.

The meat weighed in at 5.03kg or 11.1lbs. I decided on three and a half hours at 190°C. So in at 09:30 for 13:00.

While all this was going on, BH was making the summer pudding that we thought would complement the roast. A pudding which has the advantage that it can be prepared in advance and one is not fiddling about with it right up until the off.

With the two ties of ownership. The unwanted chining is visible lower left. As it turned out, it had to go on the very bottom shelf of the oven, so there was no room at the inn for roasted carrots - about which I was not completely convinced anyway. They fell by the wayside.

The vegetable part of the business. The baby corn, back left, a bit dear, was unexpectedly popular with some of our guests. Note also the two tone approach to the greens.

The fat off the stock after it had been cooled in the refrigerator. Most of it went into the roux in due course. The quarter pint or so off the roast proper was discarded: our days of keeping a dripping pot on the go are long gone.

Made the gravy in the usual way, rouxing up the fat with some flour and washing out the roasting tin with the stock. With the invaluable assistance of the principal taster.

Shortly after kick-off, cut side at the back.

Cut side. 

Factory horseradish visible right, which I did not in fact use on this occasion. I associate today to the days when I used to make horseradish sauce from scratch, out of grated horseradish roots from the garden and vinegar. Probably not grated fine enough and we should probably have put the gratings through a food mixer. But what I really remember is that, when you took the top of the jar, a great waft of something nearly knocked you out. Ammonia I suppose.

On the plate, some time later.

The beef was pretty good, but not as good as it sometimes has been. Maybe I cooked it slightly too long. Maybe it was a different sort of cow.

Summer pudding, half way through. It did very well.

All taken with a spot of bottled beer by way of apéritif, some of the Fleurie noticed at reference 2 and some of the Malbec noticed at reference 5.

Rear view later that same day.

M&S white came in again for sandwiches. And the carrots made a late appearance.

I associate to the far-off days when I used to buy excellent beef rolls, early in the evening, from a pub near the river in Guildford, in the margins of visits to the Min of Ag on the other side of town. In the days when pubs used to sell such things. The pub has, I think, long been gone.

Still going strong two days later. I was starting to make more use of the gravy.

Getting near the end of the meat phase. The stuff in and around the bones was very good.

After making the gravy, there had been getting on for a litre of stock left over, so I made that into broth with half a pound of pearl barley, plus a few oddments of meat and potato. Very good it was too.

I think the snap above was the very last knockings.

So not bad at all. I expect we shall give Ben another go, even if he is no longer there.

PS 1: I remember the pub in Guildford as being a chunky, two storey building of red brick, more or less overlooking the river, a Courage house. On which Google's AI assistant had a go, without coming up with something that works. Plus, the places where I think it might have been look in Street View to have been redeveloped.

PS 2: not having much luck with Min of Ag either. The best I can do being reference 6, associated with a mention of Epsom Road rather than London Road. The description of same at reference 7 doesn't really fit, as although there were low blocks, my memory is that they were something left over from the second war and that there was not a big house to go with them. In any event, the site now appears to be a housing estate.

PS 3: don't do any better asking for war time huts in London Road. With Google's AI assistant turning up a 1942 story about dragons' teeth. Seems a bit odd that we should have been worrying about an invasion as late as 1942, but I suppose it gave the army something to do while they were waiting for D-day. I suppose I ought to check. And I might add that there were odd bits of concrete of this sort lying around in the undergrowth in the margins of the allotment that I used to have behind Stanford Green School. Off Christchurch Road. Or, at the very least, somewhere nearby.

References

Reference 1: https://bensbutchery.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolleys-916-917-and-918.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/more-beef-from-ben.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/bens-beef.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolley-932.html.

Reference 6: https://maff1978.blogspot.com/.

Reference 7: https://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/rpr/index.php/article-index/12-articles/401-uplands.html.