Yesterday's roast beef was a very pleasant surprise. I don't often roast beef, mainly because the results are so often disappointing, and it's not just my cooking. Over the years I have just eaten so much tough old shoe leather. Most of the time, the best I can hope for is something that is not too tough & is meat tasting rather than beef flavoured.
On the whole I'm not very impressed with my stepmother's cooking but one thing she did do well was roast beef. It always seemed to come out moist & succulent, accompanied with fluffy Yorkshires.
My own mother only roasted beef once that I can remember & that was for the Fox's benefit. When we were engaged he expressed a love for beef, so she cooked it to please him. Normally she didn't roast beef for us due to a long running dispute with my father over the question of what Yorkshire puddings should be like. My mother always served appropriate accompaniments with her roasts so, for her, Yorkshires were essential. The problem was that she believed they should be light & fluffy while my Dad always insisted they should be flat & heavy. Her solution was to just avoid the situation, not roast beef & so not make any Yorkshires. It was a measure of how much she wanted to please the Fox that she roasted that joint when the Fox was dining with us that Boxing Day.
As for yesterday's roast beef, it was beautiful. The meat was moist, succulent & very beefy. It looked very dark, almost purply brown, when we bought it at the Farmers' Market. It was obviously well hung. Cooked, it was simply delicious. It made me think I should roast beef more often. It also justifies going to the market if that's a reflection of the quality of the meat we end up buying.
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