Main: Corned Beef with Mustard Maple Glaze
The Coles Magazine
Dessert: Little Salty Caramel Meringue Pies
Women’s Weekly – The Baking Collection
“What is Patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?” – Lin Yutang
Hi Everyone!
Hope you’ve had a fabulous week because I have. Finally caught up with the grandchildren after not being able to see them for nearly a year so feeling very nostalgic. When I’m with them I love to cook some of the old fashioned favourites I loved as a kid just to see if the recipes still cut it with the much younger generation. Well, I think the verdict is still out on that one but I will persist as time goes on.
So I thought we’d try another version of the old fashioned fave – corned beef. This one was in the Coles magazine and I loved all the extra vegies that went along with this recipe. It also varied from the regular slow cooking in the pot on the stove or your slow cooker, in that the last 25 minutes it is placed in a hot oven with the glaze and the vegies which brown up beautifully.
The smell throughout the house is mouthwatering to say the least. Transferring to the oven browns up the vegetables and the glaze adds a wonderful sweet and savoury flavour to what can be a rather salty cut of meat unless soaked for an hour before cooking. However, and here is the big BUT…… We all felt the meat ended up a little bit dry. It certainly fell apart when cut and was incredibly tender but next time I will add the white sauce I usually serve with corned beef. The reason I didn’t do it in the first place was because it had the mustard maple glaze over it so I thought that would form a sauce and therefore I could drizzle it over the cut beef. It dried up too much in the oven.
Never mind, that is exactly what this blog is about – a learning process. The vegetables were absolutely delicious and yes, I will do this again during winter and add the white sauce. It still got 8/10 so that wasn’t too bad at all.
Oh yes, salted caramel and meringue – well, is there anything else to say here really???? Oh, okay I had better tell you how easy this is. The pastry rolls out like a dream. The recipe says it makes 8 however, I think my flan dishes may have been a bit bigger and it only made 6.
The filling is whipped up in about 15 minutes and once cooled slightly can be placed into the prepared pastry cases, meringue on top and then in the oven for 5 minutes. (I had a lot of meringue left over). These can definitely be done in the morning or even the day before you need them. They are on my “do again” list. 9/10.
This menu, whilst having two sort of caramel, syrupy type bases (yes, I know but what can I say, I just love the flavour) is a definite comfort food menu for a cool night. Hope you give it a go.
Until next week.
From my table to yours with love x
