COOKING TIPS

Cooking Tips from The Game Larder - Claygate

Perfect Roast Beef

Set the oven to 230°C / 450°F / Gas Mark 8 for normal ovens or 210°C / 410°F for fan assisted ovens.
Pour 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over the joint and rub it in with your hands. Sprinkle salt (rock salt is best) and pepper over the joint and rub that in.

Sprinkle the flour over the top beef fat and pat it with your hands. This will crisp up the fat when it's cooked.

Put the baking tray on the hob, add the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil and wait until it's sizzling.

Add the beef and fry on all sides to seal off the joint. This will only take a couple of minutes. Take the tray off the hob, peel and roughly chop the onion. Sprinkle them under and immediately around the joint.

While the beef is cooking as described below, baste it twice during cooking. Basting involves taking the meat out of the oven (careful, the tin will be very hot), tipping the juices to one end and spooning them all over the meat. This helps to keep the joint moist when cooking.

Put the beef in the very hot pre-heated oven for 15 minutes. Turn down the heat to 190°C / 375°F / Gas Mark 5 for conventional ovens, 170°C / 325°F for fan-assisted.

Cook the beef for another 17 minutes per 450g (1lb). This will give you rare beef.
For medium cooked beef add 15 minutes more, or for well done beef add 30 minutes more.

You can tell if the joint is cooked to your liking by sticking a skewer into the middle of the joint.
If the juices are clear it's well done. Pink shows it's medium, and red shows it's rare.

When the beef is cooked, cover it with foil and let it stand. This will enhance its flavour and make carving easier. For a 450g (1 lb) joint, 20 minutes standing will be enough. For larger joints, let the meat stand for 40 minutes.

Cooking Tips from The Game Larder - Claygate

Perfect Roast New Potatoes

Little new potatoes are delicious roasted. The sharpness of a lemon pieces is particularly good with them. Serves 4

1kg small new potatoes
6 sprigs thyme
1 lemon
4 tbs extra-virgin olive oil
salt

Preheat the oven to 220C/gas 7. Put the potatoes and thyme in a roasting tin or ovenproof dish - large enough to take them all in a single layer.

Cut the lemon into wedges, then cut each wedge into three pieces. Add to the potatoes, then drizzle over the olive oil. Sprinkle with salt. Turn the potatoes and lemon until all are coated in oil. Bake for 40-45 minutes, stirring twice during that time, until the potatoes are patched with brown and very tender.

Cooking Tips from The Game Larder - Claygate

Roast lamb with rosemary

Enough for 8 people

These timings will give you a crowd-pleasing range of meat from well done but juicy at the narrow end, to slices that are still a little pink in the middle at the fat end. Add or subtract 15 minutes for a more well done or pinker result.

Although classic accompaniments would be roast potatoes and steamed vegetables (there’s still some great purple sprouting broccoli around), don’t rule out serving the meat with salads. Try warm, buttery new potatoes topped with cress freshly snipped from a punnet and a salad of roast beetroot, radish and orange.

1 leg of lamb, weighing about 5lb/2.2kg
4 x 6in/15cm sprigs of rosemary
2 carrots
2 onions
1 head of garlic, broken into cloves (unpeeled)
3 tbsp olive oil
18fl oz/500ml stock (lamb ideally, but chicken, beef or just the water from cooking floury, not new, potatoes will work)
4 tinned anchovies (optional)
1 tbsp plain flour

Method

* Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6.
* Strip the leaves from one sprig of rosemary and chop them finely. Mix with 1 tsp sea salt. If you have a pestle and mortar, it wouldn’t hurt to give them a good bash in there too, to release the pungent rosemary oils.
* Halve the carrots lengthways. Halve the onions and put them (unpeeled) in a roasting tin with the carrots, the garlic and the rest of the rosemary. Pour over 2 tbsp olive oil and toss vegetables until well coated.
* Massage the lamb well with the rest of the oil and rub it with the rosemary salt. Lay it on top of the vegetables.
* Put the tin in the oven and roast the lamb for one hour. Use a heatproof pastry brush (either natural bristle or silicone) to baste it every 20 minutes. Set the timer to remind you to do this.
* When the hour is up, baste again and raise the heat to 220C/450F/gas mark 8. Cook the lamb for another 20 minutes or so until the outside is golden and crisp. If you have a meat thermometer, take the meat out when the internal temperature reads 60C/140F for medium lamb.
* Remove the lamb from the oven and put it on a serving dish (one with a lip to catch the juices that will seep out). Place it in a warm spot out of the draught to rest for half an hour or so, covered with a large upturned bowl or a tent of foil.
* Now’s the time to make the gravy. Put the roasting tin on the hob over a medium heat and add the anchovies if you’re using them. Use a potato masher or wooden spoon to bash all the vegetables, which will now be soft and slightly caramelised, into a pulp.
* When the anchovies have broken down into a mush, pour in the stock. Bring to simmering point, stirring and scraping hard to lift all the brown gunk from the bottom of the pan.
* Pour this dark, unpromising looking mess through a sieve into a bowl (or use a gravy separator), pressing well on the solids to get all the juices out. Throw away the solids.
* Spoon the fat off the liquid and put a couple of tablespoons of fat back in the roasting tin. Add the flour and cook until brown and nutty smelling.
* Add the dark, savoury liquid to the flour mixture and cook, stirring, until smooth, thick and glossy.
* Add any juices that have gathered under the resting lamb (they have a wonderfully lamby flavour) and taste to check the seasoning.
* Carve the lamb and serve with the gravy.

TOP TIPS

* A cold joint won’t roast evenly, so make sure the lamb is at room temperature before cooking by taking it out of the fridge a couple of hours ahead of time.
* The meat needs to be really dry to crisp properly, so remove any wrapping and put it in a roasting tin, covering it with a tea towel while it comes to room temperature. Just before roasting, rub the skin with salt for the ultimate crunch.
* Put carrots, onions and garlic in the roasting tin. They’ll act as a rack for the meat and add flavour to the juices.
* Add anchovies to the gravy. No one will know they are there, and they boost the savouriness.
* Always let the meat rest before carving; up to 40 minutes is fine. This is a good time to make the gravy and crisp the roast potatoes.
* Always take the meat out of the oven before it’s quite done. It will go on cooking as it rests.

Cooking Tips from The Game Larder - Claygate

Traditional Roast Potatoes

Cooking Tips from The Game Larder - Claygate

Perfect Roast Chicken

* An average-size chicken weighs about 1.5kg and will feed a family of two adults and two children or generously satisfy two people with some meat left over for a sandwich or two the next day.

* As with most well-cooked meat, the roasting formula is 20 minutes per 450g, plus an extra 20 minutes, so it’ll take around 1 hour and 20 minutes to 1½ hours to cook your chicken perfectly.

* There are many methods of bird-roasting but as a standard chicken doesn’t take very long to cook, we don’t think there’s any need to get too complicated. We tie the legs together with string and roast ours breast-down for the first hour, so the moisture runs down into the flesh rather than out into the tin, then turn it over for the last 30 minutes to allow the skin to crisp and colour. If you prefer, cook yours right-side up for the duration of the cooking time – either way it’s not usually necessary to cover it with foil.

* Make sure the chicken is cooked through by either piercing the thigh with a skewer, or checking the juices that run out onto the resting plate. In both cases you need to make sure there’s no pinkness remaining.

Cooking Tips from The Game Larder - Claygate

Yorkshire Puddings

Ingredients
* 250g plain white flour
* 2 eggs
* 250ml/Full Fat milk
* 250ml water
* 150ml Olive Oil
* pinch of Salt

Method
Mix all the ingredients in a food processor for 2-3 minutes.
Leave to rest for a minimum of 3 hours.
Preheat the oven to 200c.
Put 1 tbsp oil in each of 10 muffin tins and rest in the oven for five minutes or until very hot.
Pulse the mixture in the food processor, pour into the tins and return to the oven.
Bake for 25 minutes or until risen and golden.
Tap on a heatproof surface and the puddings should lift out easily..

Recipe supplied by 'two to four' Restaurant, Dorking.

Cooking Tips from The Game Larder - Claygate

Perfect Gravy

Ingredients
* meat juices
* 2 tbsp liquid meat fat
* 30g/1oz plain flour
* 570ml/1 pint stock
* Bovril, Marmite or Dark Soy Sauce (optional)

Method
1. Collect the juices and the fat from the meat you are roasting. Put the juices in a glass jug and allow to stand for a few minutes so that the fat will rise to the surface. Skim off the fat.

2. Put the roasting tin that you used to cook the meat on the hob on a medium heat and add the fat. (The meat needs to be resting, covered with foil, in a warm place at this point)

3. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

4. Stir in the meat juices and gradually stir in the stock until you get a smooth gravy. Use a wooden spoon and stir all over the surface of the pan to incorporate any meat juices that are stuck to it.

5. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for 10 minutes.

6. Season to taste and add a little Bovril, Marmite or Dark Soy Sauce, to taste if desired.