Bahrni's Website

Roast
Gas Mark 4 for about fifteen hours
Sunday 2nd January 2005

Roasts are not quintessentially Kiwi, so you may be wondering why there's a page dedicated to them in the New Zealand section of this site. The reason is purely that I'm in New Zealand, and although I'm fairly self-critical, I'm not going to include my attempts to make a roast in the reviews section.

Actually, when I say "I" I should really say "we" (but if used in the above sentence it makes me sound like the Queen) as the roast was a joint effort* between myself and my girlfriend Jo.

Jo has "a theory"** regarding roasts that they are the ultimate "commitment" food. You may hang out with someone. You may order pizza with them. You may even move to the diametrically opposite side of the planet, leaving your friends, family and job to cohabit in a shared lease flat with joint bills, accounts and a scooter, but you're not really doing anything all that commited. Cooking a roast on the other hand...

Woah. Slow down, Tex.

This recalcitrance towards said heated meat products has been a bit of a running joke in our relationship, so it was a fairly jaw-dropping moment when Jo appeared home on the last day of 2004 and asked me to have a roast with her. She even brought flowers and bubbly too. She told me that, as it was the last day of the leap year, it was her last chance (according to tradition) to ask me to cook a roast with her. She's a strange bunny.

But I was happy to shared the awesome burden of roast creation, so that Sunday the operation commenced. Hampered only slightly by the fact that neither of us has the faintest idea of how to actually cook a roast.

We trawled Google, the BBC (home of Delia) and mailed friends with roast experience and slowly drew a plan of action. The joint would be coated with oil and topped with a thin layer of mustard and ground garlic. The potatoes and carrots would be boiled first, then roughed up to flour the edges*** and added at a certain point in the cooking process. Chunks of pumpkin would then be added, and lastly some peas would be boiled and gravy made.

The above plan basically worked, with one small problem. Our extremely elderly oven obviously doesn't produce the high temperatures that it's dials would claim. We had a 700g beef joint in the oven for several hours, and only in the latter stages did it genuinely begin to look roasted, by which time we'd cranked the (theoretical) temperature of the oven to get it to cook.

The end result though was significantly better than it really had any right to be. The beef came out beautifully, the gravy (with the fat from the roast added) was just right, and the veggies were pretty good too. The potatoes could have used a little more boiling before roasting to make them really nice and soft, but that's just a personal preference. All in all, I think next time, we'll make an even better job of it. Assuming there is a next time****.

* if you'll excuse the pun.
** as "issues" sounds bad.
***you basically boil the veggies then drain the water and, with the lid firmly held on, thrash the pan about to roughen their surface to give a nice crunchy coating when roasted.
****Depending on Jo's reaction after she reads this.