A delightful lunch

I have had limited luck with buying meat around here.  The supermarket stuff is well, supermarket stuff, and the one joint I had from a local butcher was expensive and rather mediocre.  So the other day I had a look at the old chest freezer which had come with us and had been sitting in the garage since we moved in.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten to make sure that it had defrosted cleanly – and when I opened it, it had six inches of nasty scummy water with “bits” floating about inside.  If it had been a decent freezer, I would have held my nose and cleaned it out, but as it was semi-knackered anyway (handle had dropped off and it was difficult to open and close) I decided just to buy a new one.

With this installed in the garage and plugged in, I can now freeze things in quantity again – so I bought a large meat parcel from an organic farm I have been using for years – they breed blackface sheep and belted Galloway cows.

Today we had a lovely brisket pot roast with roasties, Yorkshire puddings and veg.  I cooked the beef in the slow cooker with onions, carrots, stock and herbs for five hours.  It was meltingly tender and the juices made a lovely gravy.  We also had that most celebrated pudding of many Masterchef disasters – a chocolate fondant.  It actually turned out pretty perfectly for me – soft cake on the outside and melting interior.  It even came out of the mould successfully all three times!