Recipes

From British Regional Cooking by Mark Hix. A warming recipe to make use of salt beef - a good cheap cut from the butchers that makes a generous hearty main course.

Serves 4

    1kg salted silverside or brisket, soaked overnight in cold water
    4 small onions, each about 80-100g, peeled
    12 young carrots, trimmed and scraped
    10 black peppercorns
    a few sprigs of thyme
    2 cloves
    2 blades of mace
    1 bay leaf

For the horseradish dumplings

    125g plain flour, sieved
    1 tsp baking powder
    ½tsp salt
    65g shredded beef suet
    1 tbsp chopped parsley
    1 tbsp freshly grated horseradish

Method

Drain the beef and rinse in cold water, then put in a large pan with the vegetables and flavourings. Cover with water to about 5-6cm above the beef and bring to the boil. Skim and simmer gently, covered, for 30 minutes.

Remove the carrots and put to one side. Simmer for another 30 minutes, or until the onions are cooked, remove them and put with the carrots. Continue cooking the beef for an hour or so. Cooking times will vary depending on the size of the beef; if it’s prepacked, cooking times will normally be given. When the beef is cooked, remove it from the pan and keep warm.

While the beef is cooking, make the dumplings: mix all the ingredients together with enough cold water to make a sticky dough. Flour your hands and roll the dough into 12 little balls. When the cooked beef has been removed from the pan, remove some of the cooking liquid and poach the dumplings in it for 10 minutes, then remove them and put to one side and discard the liquid.