Whew that’s a mouthful, but a good mouthful. 😀 This welcome back to Canada dinner I cooked for my best friend Dickie was pretty awesome. After having cooked chicken the last two nights, I wanted something totally different. I decided on roast beef with a herb rub. I picked up some Juniper berries on my last trip to the Bulk Bin. (I’m pretty sure I’m calling it the wrong thing, but it’s what I call it. I think it’s the Bulk Barn… Whatever, things are in bins, so I call it the Bulk Bin.) I knew that they were a pretty potent spice and needed to be paired with a hearty meat, so I figured a roast was my best option.

I went through a few recipes, but ended up doing what I always do and that’s run with my own idea (or what I have ingredient-wise). I do use some parts of the recipes, but I always end up with a mish mash of recipes, with a twist of my own ideas.

Here’s the spice rub recipe.

Herb & Garlic Roast Beef Rub #1 (It needs a better name… but this will do for now.)

1/2 tbsp Yellow Mustard Seeds
1 tsp Celery Seeds
2 tsp Juniper Berries
1/2 tbsp Peppercorns
1 tsp Dried Rosemary
2 tsp Paprika
1 tbsp Dried Oregano

3 tbsp Minced Garlic (fresh)

1 – Mix everything except the garlic in a mortar and pestle and break down to a powder.

*(Pretty easy, plus you get a work out with all the smashing. So once this was done I set it aside until it was time to cook the roast.)

2 – When ready to cook, mix spice rub powder with garlic and spread over roast.

I suppose you can rub this on the night before to allow for flavour penetration, but the roast was taking a marinade bath in the fridge in a mixture of soy sauce, lemon juice, red wine, garlic, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce. And yes, I can write that word without needing spell check. 😉

So I pack everything up to head to Dickie’s and make my way to the car. NOTE TO EVERYONE: Never travel on foot with a bottle of wine upright in a box no higher than a quarter of the bottle’s overall height. Point being, SMASHO!!! No more wine. There’s nothing worse than watching it fall and you know there’s nothing you can do about it. Through the miracle of cellphones however, I managed to organize another bottle to meet me at the house for dinner. (I texted the boy and said I smashed the wine…) 😀

So I get to Dickie’s and start cooking. After I covered the roast in the garlic & herb mixture, I set it on the rack of the roasting pan over some beef stock.

I decided to pair the roast beef with Yorkshire puddings (my first attempt), a cauliflower puree (also my first attempt), and some steamed broccoli with a spicy cheddar cheese sauce. Now this is a lot to take care of, but what made all this worse, is that everything had to be done at the SAME time. Pretty much the same time. As soon as the roast came out, the oven was cranked and the muffin tins went in to heat up the fat. The pudding batter had been sitting for a half hour, coming to room temp and was ready to be poured. The roast pan took over the right-hand side of the stove for the gravy. On the left-hand side, I was making the cheese sauce and getting the cauliflower soft for the puree. I only burned myself once, which isn’t too bad, based on the mess I was rocking. Once the puddings were in the oven, I struggled seeing where they were at because the oven glass was a shite design. (I could only go based on the timer, not colour, so I may have had more success at my house with my oven.)

All in all, aside from the over-cooked puddings, everything else was fantastic.

Tonight’s dinner is going to be easy. Poached eggs on spinach and toast.
(Except for the fact I’ve never poached an egg in water… UNTIL TONIGHT!!!) 😉
I’ll let you all know how that goes. 😀

Chef-In-Training Mandy