Recipes From My Travel's - Paul's take on English classic 'Roast Beef' as St George's Day approaches - The Coventry Observer

Recipes From My Travel's - Paul's take on English classic 'Roast Beef' as St George's Day approaches

Coventry Editorial 22nd Apr, 2022   0

CHEF and blogger Paul James writes for our paper.

With St George’s Day approaching I wanted to make something the English are famous for, no not balti, pizza or kebabs but yes roast beef.

I wanted to make it a little different to the usual – by making beef olives and not a Greek olive in sight, not this time at least.




The name ‘Beef Olives’ does not have any association with the olives you pick off a tree. But the ‘olives’ refer to small parcels of filling wrapped around by thin slices of beef and slow cooked in a gravy.

Now I know the Scottish are going to claim beef olives are theirs, but I’m adding English mustard, English cheddar, English beef, and good old English stout.


I think you get the picture. Beef olives made their first appearance in the Middle Ages I believe and are so simple to make, you can even do all of the prep work in advance.

St. George’s Day was a major feast and national holiday in England on a par with Christmas from the early 15th century.

Unfortunately today we don’t seem to celebrate this occasion as much as the Irish do for St Patrick’s Day for instance.

But let’s raise a toast today for St George and celebrate with a slightly different version of a roast beef dinner.

Visit recipesfrommytravels.com for more on Paul’s blog and recipes.

Braised beef olives with mustard and cheddar stuffing

Ingredients

Sandwich steak or sizzle steaks

Four slices of white bread

1tbsp of English mustard powder

50g of English cheddar cheese

1 egg

1tbsp of thyme

1 finely chopped white onion

1tbsp of rosemary

1/2 can of English stout

Beef stock made up with a stock cube

Knob of English butter

Butchers string.

 

Method

1. Pre-Heat the oven to 180c.

2. In a small frying pan, gently fry the onion in the butter.

3. In a bowl break up the bread, add a beaten egg, 1tbsp of mustard powder, cheese, thyme and rosemary and mix.

4. Once the onion has softened, add it to the stuffing mixture and leave to cool.

5. Lay out your steaks on a chopping board and roll a piece of your cooled stuffing mixture in to a small sausage shape.

6. Place at one end of your steak and roll carefully, pushing in the sides as you go.

7. Repeat until all of the steaks are done.

8. Now with the string, don’t panic, all you are doing is securing the stuffing as best as you can and trying to hold its shape.

9. Cut a piece of string, place under each beef olive, bring it over and tie a knot.

10. Turn the beef olive around and repeat.

11. Place all of the beef olives in a baking tray, then in a jug make up the beef stock with some boiling water and add the stout.

12. Pour over the beef olives and braise gently in the oven for a couple of hours or until the meat is soft.

13. Serve with some mashed potato, Yorkshire pudding and vegetables.

 

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