Dave The Slave: Beef Topside Roast

Last night we had a lovely roast dinner. I'd looked at a couple of different recipes I found on the net and decided to improvise a little with the ingredients I had. Normally I just rub the roast with some oil and leave it at that.

Ingredients

Spice Rub
Handful of peppercorns
Handful of fresh oregano
1 tbspn dried basil
2 tspn crushed garlic
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tbspn soy sauce

Beef Topside
Olive Oil

2 large Potatoes
1 tbspn finely chopped fresh rosemary
2 pieces pumpkin
2 large carrots
2 pieces sweet potato

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grind the peppercorns with a mortar and pestle. Add the other ingredients and mix it all into a smooth paste. Rub some olive oil all over the topside and then do the same with the spice mix. Place the roast in a roasting pan and cook for 30 mins per 500g. Use a meat thermometer if you're not sure how long to cook it for, they're great! I also found a "Meat Doneness Chart" which can help as well.

For the potatoes... I've never had much luck getting my potatoes to be nice and crunchy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So I found some tips on a few different sites and came up with this method.

Peel potatoes and cut them in halves. Pop them in some boiling salted water for about 5 minutes. Remove and empty water from pot, then place potatoes back into the pot and place back over the heat for a few minutes, stirring the whole time. This dries them out. Chop some rosemary and rub over the potatoes. Put some vegetable oil in an oven proof dish, just a little for the potatoes to sit in, and place in the oven for about 5 minutes until the oil heats up. Then place the potatoes carefully into the oil. Cook them for about 30-40 minutes, turning every 10 minutes. Apparently it's better if your oven is very hot, although I left mine at 200°C as I was still cooking the roast and they still turned out great!

I also had some pumpkin roasting with the potatoes, and steamed some carrots and sweet potatoes. To make the gravy, I melt a good tbspn of butter in a pot, add some chopped mushrooms and saute them for a few minutes. Add a heaped tablespoon of flour and stir well for 1 minute. Then add some stock or some drippings from the roast if you have any. I just used stock, about 1 1/2 cups. Stir that over a low heat until it's nice and thick.