Slow cooked roast beef for a crowd

This is a good method for cooking a cheaper cut of beef if you are feeding a crowd.  Unless you are being reimbursed some of the costs of the meal roast prime rib is not the way to go if you have a lot of people to provide a roast beef meal for.  Also traditional roasting of a good cut of beef can be a bit finicky as you have to get the timing exactly right or you can serve raw meat or over cooked dry meat.

This is simple fool proof and importantly very tasty. You do not want to use a very tough cut, a sirloin tip works fine, just make sure that there is some marbling of fat, but not too much.

I am afraid it is hard to give exact measurements here, so I will give proportions, as it really depends on the size of the beef roast and how many you want to feed.  But it will work for a family of 4 or a party of 40.

Spice rub

1/3 salt
1/3 paprika
1/3 fresh ground black pepper

Rub the spice rub all over the beef.

Then double wrap in foil and place in a roasting tin.

Roast belly pork

I picked up a beautiful slab of meaty belly pork at The Ginger pig at Greensmiths, belly pork is one my favourite cuts of meat.  There is a fair amount of fat and would probably not be a wise choice on regular basis, but I was on holiday after all.

I made a rub with malden salt and fresh time, by mixing together in a pestle and mortar.

I rubbed that in to the skin, which the butcher had scored for me.

butterflied roast chicken with stuffing

It was Saturday night and 5:30 and Connie and I felt like roast chicken for dinner.  We did not want to eat too late and so I decided to butterfly the chicken before roasting to speed up the process.  This put us in mind of the time that at 5:00 we decided to make cassolet for dinner!  Traditionaly this is a dish that takes about 3 days, but undeterred we we made it and were eating cassolet before 8:00.  I am not really sure how, just put it down to the kitchen Gods and determination.

Butterflying a chicken is much easier than it sounds, but it does require a good pair of kitchen scissors see roast butterflied chicken and potatoes.

Apart from cooking quicker than an un-butterflied chicken, the other advantage is that if you lay the chicken on top of a suitable ingredient the juices from the chicken will be absorbed by it.  Last time I had roasted the chicken on top of potatoes.  This time I decided to make a quick stuffing from some bread that I had that was past it's best.

2 cups of bread roughly chopped
1/2 onion chopped
1 sprig of sage chopped
1 lemon
2 tablespoons of olive oil


In a bowl, I mixed together the cut up bread and onion chopped and a sprig of fresh sage finely chopped. I laid this in the roasting tin and topped it with half a lemon sliced.

Roast butterflied chicken and potatoes

I have seen recently this method of cooking a whole chicken several times in the last month or so and have been meaning to try it for a while.  I have seen it cooked on top of a bed of vegetables, as well just potatoes and on the barbecue.  Butterflying the chicken in this way allows it to cook much quicker, and my family decided because of this it kept the chicken moister.

The thought of the chicken roasting on a bed of potatoes appealed to me, I recently cooked a roast rack of lamb on potatoes and the potatoes were wonderful.  With all the juices that come out of a chicken this could only be better.

Butterflying (or spatchcocking) is quite easy to do, but you do need a good pair or kitchen shears.  I expect any decent butcher would do it for you.

Feeds 4

1 whole frying chicken
4 medium potatoes sliced
1 onion sliced
sprig of thyme
sprig of sage
Drizzle of olive oil

Roast rack of pork with apples

We had a friend and her husband coming over for dinner on Saturday evening, but I was taking a ferry home that afternoon, speed was of the essence.  I really had lamb in mind when I headed to the store, but when I got to there this rack of pork was speaking to me. I love this cut of pork, it is fairly lean, but keeping it on the bone seems to add flavour as we well as keep it moist.

Also this is the perfect size to roast for four.

1 apple peeled and cut in to large chunks (I used granny smith)
1/2 onion sliced thickly
2 or 3 sprigs of fresh sage
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 rack of pork
1 cup of chicken stock.
1 glug of white wine (optional)

Place the apples onion and sage on the base of a small roasting tin sprinkle with the olive oil.

Spring roast lamb with lemon and rosemary

Saturday was warm and sunny, warm enough to eat lunch on the deck, finally spring is here.  This made me crave rack of lamb for some reason.  Probably because the day before I had seen some really good looking Canadian lamb at the local grocery store.  Any way I went back and picked up a very meaty 6 bone rack of lamb for dinner.  I had been browsing around on the Donna Hay magazine that I had on my Ipad and saw this rack roasted on top of potatoes, I thought that sounded like a really good idea, and so I decided to give it a try.

Serves 2

4 small potatoes thinly sliced
Sprig of rosemary
1/2 lemon thinly sliced
Rack of lamb
2 tablespoons of olive oil

Line a roasting tin or high sided cookie sheet with parchment paper and place the potatoes on the  bottom making a bed big enough to place the lamb on. Place on top a couple of slices of lemon and sprinkle on some rosemary leaves.

Sprinkle on some salt and pepper then place the lamb (which you have already dusted with salt and pepper) on top with the bone side down.

Roast beef with mahogany gravy

This is not so much a recipe as a technique for a great rich dark full bodied beef gravy.  I saw this done by a friend in England last time I was there and ever since this is how I have been cooking my roast beef.  I can not give quantities as it really varies depending how many juices come out of the beef, how much gravy you want, and whether the moon is full or not.  Actually not the last one or least I don't think so.

finished gravy sitting in a perfect Yorkshire pudding.

Before placing the roast in the roast in the roasting tin place an onion (or two) roughly chopped in the bottom and then place the roast on top.  In this case this roast was to feed 6 and I used one large onion.

Sprinkle the roast liberally with salt and pepper and if as was the case with this one there is not a lot of fat on the outside, pour a little olive oil over.  Roast as you normally do to the doneness that you like, then when you remove the beef to rest you are left with a roasting tin with not only some lovely drippings but also some wonderfully caramelized onion.

Roast pork stuffed with apricot stuffing

Saturday found me up at Pender Harbour looking for inspiration at the Oak tree Market for dinner.  They had some lovely looking crown of pork roasts and I was reminded of a recipe for roast pork with apricot stuffing that I had seen on Not Quite Nigella last week.  I thought at the time that I liked the sound of it so this was the perfect opportunity to try it out.

Of course I changed it up a bit partly because I was missing some of the ingredients.

2 shallots finely chopped (or 1 small onion)
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 clove of garlic sliced
1/2 cup of dried apricots chopped
2 cups of olive bread chopped
a sprig of thyme (well actually I would have liked a sprig of thyme but there was none)
1 tablespoon of grand marnier
1/4 of orange juice.