Pleasures of a traditional meal

Press, 20 May 1987, Page 17

Pleasures of a traditional meal

One Saturday night recently I cooked an impromptu dinner for some friends. We sat around the fire eating fillets of fish with a hot, spicy Thai sauce, an interesting rice mixture, and a crunchy salad with a Japanese dressing, commenting that this type of meal was exactly what we wanted. A few days later, on a cold and blustery night, I cooked a completely different meal for the same, friends. Itt was a traditional meal and we sat around the table for hours, thoroughly enjoying ourselves again. We decided that such a meal, especially when served at the' end of a long, hard day, could not be beaten! This time our menu was boiled corned silverside, mustard sauce, mashed potatoes, whole carrots and cabbage — everything in very generous quantities! I piece (2’/ 2 kg) corned silverside water to cover 4 garlic cloves, chopped 1 stalk celery, sliced 1 stem dill, with flowers 2 stalks parsley 2 large bay leaves

1 chilli In a large saucepan put the beef, with water to cover it, and with the remaining ingredients. Replace the chilli with black peppercorns if you like, and replace the fresh dill with half a teaspoon of dill seeds if necessary (or leave it out if you don’t want a dilly flavour). Bring mixture to a gentle simmer and adjust the heat so that it stays at this stage for about three hours, until the meat is just tender. Then remove from the heat and leave to stand in the liquid. Do not overcook — with prolonged cooking the slices of meat will break apart and will lose their moist, slightly chewy tenderness. Start testing a small piece of meat after two hours cooking. The large piece of silverside I cooked served six people, generously, with absolutely no wastage. Mustard Sauce Melt 2 tablespoons butter, add 2 tablespoons flour and cook for 2-3 minutes. Stir -in mustard to taste. Use to 1 teaspoon dry English mus-

Alison Hoist’s Food Facts 4

tard, or 2 to 3 teaspoons of Dijon type mustard (as I did). Add a cup of liquid. Use undiluted skimmed corned beef cooking liquid unless it is too salty, in which case use part stock and part water. Bring mixture to the boil, adding extra liquid to get consistency correct. Taste and add a dash of wine vinegar if you like a sour taste to the sauce and/or 1 or 2 tablespoons

of cream if you want to soften it. I usually add both. Serve sauce over the sliced beef. ’ Mashed potatoes Cook potatoes until tender in liquid of equal parts corned beef liquid and water. Drain and mash with plenty of milk, a little butter, and pepper to taste. Remember to beat in seasonings with a fork after mashing until

smooth, for creamy mashed potatoes. Carrots Peel more carrots than you think you could possibly need. Choose small carrots, so you can leave them whole. Cook until barely tender in a ladleful of water from the corned beef. Drain. Cabbage Shred cabbage quite finely, just before, you plan to c.ook it, if possible. I used' a whole, 'sniall drumhead cabbage, then feeling hungry, added half a shredded Chinese cabbage as well. These two, mixed, produced an excellent result. Saute a chopped garlic clove in a tablespoon of butter, then add the cabbage, and just enough corned beef liquid to stop it sticking, and make steam. Cook briefly,

tightly covered, turning frequently, until tender crisp and bright green. I used the well-sea-soned corned beef liquid in everything served with this meal. It tied all the flavours together in the most delicious way. Traditionally all the vegetables would have been added to the pot containing the beef (the cabbage in wedges). If is very hard to cook everything to exactly the right stage by this method, however. NOTE? Good corned beef is not cheap! However, you get what you pay for. The piece of silverside I used required absolutely no trimming, and the cooking liquid needed very little skimming — the next morning there were only 2 to 3 tablespoons of congealed fat on top of it. The meat cost a little more than $2 per serving.