Why, oh, why do I always do this to myself?
I don’t cook frequently, yet when I do, it must be these big multi-hour productions that don’t always end up the way I envision them.
Total cooking time: 5 hours.
Total eating time: 30 minutes. Maybe less
How did it all begin?
I had a hunk of 1.2kg of beef. Striploin. I got it for about $30 at Carrefour when it was on discount. So we’re talking select beef here. Which basically means, minimal marbling.
And then I had excess whipping cream.
So I googled for recipes using whipping cream and I got banana cream pie and what not. But I wasn’t excited by it.
Until I hit horseradish with whipped cream – the perfect condiment for roast beef. And then suddenly, I had Yorkshire pudding on the menu. And why stop there? How about some mash potato too? Oh but what about greens?
Oven set to 120 degrees. Slow cooking beef.
First in, veg.
Rule number one of cooking. Don’t put all your veges in one tray. Yes, I was begging for trouble when I put longer cooking veges with fast cooking ones. Disaster in the making. Yes? Almost. I managed to retrieve the easier to cook ones out first.
I was also taking a risk. I knew that I needed higher temperatures to cook the veg than I would need for the beef. But I thought, hey, it’ll just cook slower.
Yes, it did. It also lost a lot of colour in the process.
I shall not plague you with the picture of resultant veges. Suffice to say, it was edible. Want to get your child off greens forever, this would be the perfect way.
At 120 degrees C, was aiming for a medium done hunk of meat. Internal temp of meat about 60 degrees C. Take it out 2 degrees before to rest, as during resting internal temp rises 2 degrees. Hence, meat had to be out at 58 degrees or so.
Salt. Pepper. Seal meat on all sides in pan. Save oil for Yorkshire pudding.
Garlic, salt, powdered mustard, fresh rosemary from the pot. Mashed.
Put all over meat. On onion halves.
Pop into oven. At least 1.5 hours. Turned out to be 2 hours. Could have gone 2.5 hours.
Rested meat 45 minutes while doing gravy and Yorkshire pudding.
Looks pretty good ain’t it? But, that red part turns redder and more blood comes out while cutting. It was swimming in sweet bloody juices by the end of cutting. And those juices would’ve, could’ve gone into making a better gravy.
In retrospect, could’ve rested a lot longer than 45 minutes.
Oven temp up to max. 250 degrees C.
From roasting pan of beef, spoon out excess oil from roast drippings. Save oil for Yorkshire pudding.
Muffin trays for Yorkshire Pudding. Oil them. Pop in oven to heat up.
Put roasting pan on fire. Before the drippings start to really burn, scrape and pour in red wine. Someone gave us a bottle. I put that in. It was horrid. Only use red wine you’d drink to cook. I don’t drink red wine. Perhaps I should never use it in cooking.
Salt. Pepper. Taste. Chucked in some fresh rosemary. I have so much. No idea what to do with it.
I nearly died and panicked reducing the gravy and I couldn’t get rid of that sour after taste of crappy wine. Added water. Threw in a vegetable stock cube. Dying. Turned the heat up high to boil. Panicking. Boiled a bit off. Less sour after taste
Gave up. Moved on to Yorkshire pudding.
Oh actually, while the gravy was being done, also did the mash potatoes.
Mash. I didn’t want plain brown potatoes. No, so I put in an orange sweet potato in the mix. Boil with salt, mash, butter, milk, black pepper. Use the drained liquid in the gravy mix.
Oh, also did the horseradish in the meantime. Now, by the time I actually decided what to do with the whipping cream I had in the fridge, it healthy green scum had already decided to float. Had to buy another carton of whipping cream. Bought a smaller 200ml box from NTUC. Cost about a dollar less than the 1 litre one at Poon Huat.
NTUC has no horseradish, except a big bottle from Heinz. Didn’t want a bottle. Don’t like Heinz. Nothing fresh. Bought Wasabi in a tube. Hand whipped the whipping cream for 5 minutes, mixed in the wasabi. Nice green stuff. Matched my pink mash.
Okay, Yorkshire pudding.
Recipe from Good Food BBC:
- 115g plain flour
- 2 eggs
- 1 egg white
- 175ml milk + 50ml water
- Season salt and pepper
Makes 12 Yorkshire Pudding. I made 15. I also forgot the 50ml water, which didn’t seem to do harm, but may have caused it to be less light in texture.
Mix the flour, eggs and eggs first till smooth. No lumps. Milk and water, add in batches. Pour into a jug for easier pouring into muffin molds.
Hot, hot muffin pan from oven with oil.
Key to success – sufficient oil and hot hot hot pan. If it doesn’t sizzle a lot when you pour the batter, stop. Throw tin back into oven to heat up. You can sacrifice that one dud. The dog will love it. Or your neighbour’s dog.
This is the photo of the first tray. It sizzled and looks successful.
But by the third pan, I realised it could sizzle more.
The first two pans, I didn’t put enough oil. Some sticking to the pan. Third pan, I poured in more oil. So much so that you pour in the batter, it floats on top of the hot oil (sizzling away) and it browns and cooks at the bottom.
Really crispy, so nice, I ate it on its own.
Not enough oil from the beef drippings? Use corn oil.
How do you know when you can make a better Yorkshire pudding? Taste it.
In the first place, it’s light and crispy. But you know when you can do better sizzling, when you still find the Yorkshire pudding tastes eggy. Yup. When done right, the egg taste almost completely disappears. Make sure it browns up enough to keep its form and not collapse when out from oven.
Surprisingly, the gravy tasted pretty good with the beef. You didn’t taste the sour when it was on the beef.
All that blood from the cutting, went back into the gravy and was re-boiled. Gravy tasted much better. Conclusion: Add some real beef meet during gravy making, or just get more drippings with longer cooking.
Then I dumped back the few uneaten slices of beef into the gravy and cooked it up.
Leftovers, for sandwiches, or with rice. Lovely. Creamed wasabi goes great with beef or bacon sandwiches.