Friends for dinner - Pot Roasted Veal with New Potatoes and Vichy Carrots

We're still eating the cow.

We were trying to tot up how many meals we've eaten from it:

- Veal escalops - 3 weeknight suppers
- Stewing meat - 2 weeknight suppers
- Shoulder - 2 dinners
- Rack - One Sunday lunch

And still we have

- shin (osso bucco)
- Silverside
- Another piece of shoulder
- a few escalops

And still it goes on. I decided to defrost the Silverside for our dinner party on Friday night. 3 guests, cooking for five and the shoulder piece looked a bit too small. Again, another piece I've no experience in cooking, so some research was in order.

All I know about silverside comes from my knowledge of the the calfs older relatives. From what I know about beef silverside, it's not a first class cut for roasting. It's not got enough of it's own fat, and it dries out easily. But it's too good to waste on a stew.

The legendary Ruth Bean (more on her later) the purveyor of my half cow, needed to be consulted. As ever she was full of culinary insight and wisdom.

The answer is a pot roast - a compromise between a stew and a roast. Basically you roast the joint at a low temperature (175 on my fan assisted oven), with a bit of fluid, in a covered pot. This creates a moist atmosphere to cook the meat in and stops it going dry.

Mrs. Bean had some tips and rules for this process. Sear the meat in a pan before you start the roast. Sear it in a bit of oil with a knob of butter - and she stressed the importance of butter, apparently this lifts the dish to another level (her words). And be careful not to burn the oil.

This is much harder than it sounds. In order to get a good browning on meat you need fiery temperatures. But butter and olive oil burn at relatively low temperatures. I did consider using a sturdier oil, like groundnut, but it seemed wrong with what is essentially an italian dish.

So instead I walked the tightrope, keeping a keen eye on the gas (you really couldn't manage this with electric). I seared the meat in two pieces as Delia told me you should never crowd a pan when trying to brown meat (she's right, as ever).

Due to my cautiousness on the heat I didn't manage a really good, brown crunchy crust, but I kinda sorta got there with the browning.

Then out went the additional fat, and time to roast the meat. Mrs. Bean told me some rules on adding the fluid to the pan. Don't add too much, baste regularly.

With this in mind I put in a glass of wine, and about the same amount of chicken stock. I'm still saving my last freezer pack of stock (which is getting a bit tedious now - time to boil another carcass I think), so I had to use something synthetic again. This time I used some concentrated chicken bouillion from Waitrose - which, whilst nowhere near the real stuff - isn't at all a bad option. I might try keeping a few packs of this stuff in the larder. A quick scout of the ingredients reveals that it is actually made from boiled bones (unlike a cube), although they throw a lot of questionable stuff in with it. Glucose came it at a whopping 9%, which means you are chucking a ton of sugar into your dish. And salt of course, so be very careful when seasoning.

Then for a bit of flavour. I opted for my favourite veal accompaniments. Rosemary, garlic, lemon. I chucked into the pond several sprigs of rosemary, three crushed garlic cloves and a quartered lemon.

Into the oven at 175, I basted every 15mins (sticking to the guidance of the legend Mrs. B).

I decided to cook for just under 2 hours. It was a big piece of veal. The advantage of this method of cooking, as opposed to a traditional roast, is that precision timing is not required. The meat, as long as it's regularly basted, won't dry out too easily. So I could cook the meat thoroughly for my pregnant wife.

And this proved particularly fortuitous, since our guests were 30 mins late.

I rested the meat for 20 minutes (wrapped in foil and covered with a tea towel to keep warm) whilst I made the sauce.

Another advantage of pot roasting is the sauce is already half done. I just sieved off what was left in the pan, and reduced it down. I tried arrowroot as a thickener as there was some handy from a recipe my wife was making. Two teaspoons went in, but the effect with negligible (I'll probably stick to cornflour in future). I also added some double cream. It seemed appropriate, and I had a pot open for another recipe.

The meat was an absolute revelation. It was everything meat should be, moist, juicy, tender, flavousome. The sauce I was less happy with. I think I put too much lemon in the pan, which made the sauce very tart and acidic, so I'll tone that down a lot next time. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves though.