craven.fr (.ox.ac.uk)

Sunday roast is really more British cooking than American, but the lines of what consitutes American cuisine are pretty vague anyway. And as this is my own adaptation of the meal, and since I am an American, that automatically makes it American cooking, if you want to get technical about it!

The Menu

The menu consists of roast beef, au gratin potatoes, and Yorkshire puddings. It would probably be healthier to replace the au gratin potatoes with roast vegetables like in the picture, but I haven't gotten around to figuring out roast vegetables yet. At any rate I'm going to put the au gratin potatoes in a separate article to keep this one from being too long, so here we need only concern ourselves with the roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, and the gravy.

Roast Beef

Unfortunately, Emilie likes her beef to be cooked to at least medium, which ruins roast beef but she won't eat it if it's too red. So I try to shoot for a medium rare centre and give her the end pieces, but if you are not as constrained as I am, I recommend shortening the cooking time on this somewhat.

Ingredients

• 1 nice piece of roast beef, around 800g or so
• 1 onion
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• Thyme
• 1 tbsp EVOO

Preparation

Preheat oven to 230°C. Chop the onion into slices and line the bottom of the roasting pan with them, and set the meat on top (this makes the gravy better). Dice the garlic cloves into tiny bits. Cut a few slots in the top of the roast beef, spaced a couple inches apart, and stuff the garlic into these slots. Sprinkle with thyme and rub down with the olive oil. Put in oven for 17 minutes, then lower temperature to 190° C. Bake for 15 minutes more for every 450g of meat, monitoring the temperature at centre; when it gets to 140°F (yes, my meat thermometer has Fahrenheit and my oven has Celcius) it's done. Remove and cover with tin foil for at least a few minutes before slicing.

Yorkshire pudding

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 60 ml milk
• 60 ml flour
• Salt & pepper
• 2 tbsp oil

Preparation

Put oil in bottom of 4 slots in a muffin tin and put in in the oven while the roast is cooking to get hot.  Beat eggs thouroughly, and then add in milk and slowly incorporate flour. Season. Heat oven to 230° (the roast is probably still cooking, I alternate removing and putting it back in the hotter oven if it needs a little more time). Carefully but quickly remove the very hot oven tin (taking especial care not to touch or spill any of the boiling hot oil) and pour in batter so that each slot is half full, and quickly return tin to oven. Bake about 15 minutes, until pudding tops are golden brown.

Gravy

Ingredients

• Drippings from roast beef (above)
• 1/2 cube beef bouillon, disolved (these are the French rectangular cubes)
• 2-3 tbsp flour

Preparation

Pour drippings into a bowl or gravy boat (optionally removing the onions if you don't want them). Pour in beef bouillon. Whisk in flour to thicken to desired consistency.

This recipe makes enough roast beef and gravy for six servings, but enough Yorkshire pudding for two, because the puddings can't be used as leftovers (they should be eaten immediately out of the oven), whereas the roast beef makes excellent leftovers and can also be frozen.