Foodie Tales: Friday, 3rd November 2006

Monster post ahead - tons of pics.

I decided to cook dinner for my family and favourie people. I asked J what she wanted to eat and predictably, she said without hesitation, "Ooh, your roast beef, roast chicken, roast potatoes and don't forget the peas with bacon". (You know, I am capable of cooking something else too)! That's a meal I've cooked numerous times (as some of you might have noticed) and somehow it's always asked for repeatedly.

These are the chickens before they went into the oven. Lightly marinated and propped up by carrots and red onions. I added a head of garlic, unpeeled, and inserted knobs of flavoured butter under the skin. I basted the chickens 3 times in the hour and half they needed to cook and turned them over to crisp the skin on the back in the last 10 mins. Here they are, just out of the oven.

Here is another pic just so you can see the garlic. The garlic turned soft and ploppy and it was delicious - I squirted them out of their leaves and added the mushy garlic cloves into the gravy.

I let the chickens sit for an hour before I deboned and sliced them. Deboning and slicing 2 x 1.6 kg chickens took approximately half an hour, helped along by a large glass of Cabernet, a sharp knife and a sharpening stone nearby.

Next the beef.

Again, a favourite of all - and that crust again - grainy mustard, flour, breadcrumbs, chopped garlic, parsley, mixed herbs, good lug of olive oil, salt & pepper. The beef was 'aged' in the fridge for a good 24 hours before cooking.

Here they are, just out from the oven. There were 2 joints - one done rare, the way I like it, and the other medium. By this time, it was almost 6 pm, and I had not finished roasting the potatoes, done the peas, cauliflower or made the two gravies yet NOR sliced the meats. So you can sense a slight panic in the kitchen with elf being away for the day with the children almost 90 kms away. I was overjoyed to see them all when they walked in just after 6.