Autumn is here, and as I think I’ve mentioned before this means it’s time for warming pies, stews, and in this case: roasts. This beef brisket roast was suggested to me by a work colleague who cooks it at least once a month, even during the summer!

The recipe  comes from the Guide of Food Writers, who might be good at the writing part, but a couple of images or diagrams wouldn’t go amiss! Instead of just roasting or braising, you wrap the brisket tightly in foil, which keeps the juices in.

Adding to the appeal of this recipe is the flavouring: cinnamon, cumin, coriander, garlic & bay.

After wrapping up this goes into a 150C regular oven (the fan one is going to do the veg) for six hours.

After five hours we start on the veg and sides.

The roast potatoes will use up the last of the duck fat we’ve been freezing since Christmas. So par-boil and shake…

Other veg will include roast skin-on shallots, and roast whole garlic bulbs. These get cooked at the same time as the potatoes, with the garlic being wrapped in foil.

Finally some greens are needed, so the last of the chard from the garden will get used up.

Yorkshire puddings are a must of course. We don’t have a proper yorkie tin, so we’re just doing them in muffin tins. We’re also going to try using lard for the fat for some extra meaty flavour :)

Once the beef has had its six hours it comes out, gets unwrapped, and sits tented to finish cooking.

Then it gets ‘sliced’… turns out it’s too tender for that!

While it sits it’s time to make the gravy from all the juices that were in the foil packet. It starts innocently enough: take juices, including garlic, bay, any bits of brisket (which get strained out at the end) and heat on the hob with red wine, maybe some flour if it needs thickening. So far so good…

Then comes the tricky part: his recipe requires a teaspoon of Marmite in the gravy. which he swears is a necessary ingredient. That makes sense to me, and as I’m firmly in the Marmite Love It camp, Soph is in the Hate It camp… So I’m going to have to sneak it in while she’s not looking and tell her about it afterwords, assuming she doesn’t detect it in the gravy and throw me out of the house for ruining her dinner…

Soo… not as many juices as expected. So the gravy is basically wine… but I did get away with the Marmite!

Time to eat!

Beef: so fally-aparty and delicious.

Potatoes: perfectly crispy!

Shallots: so full of flavour.

Yorkies: big… but not crispy enough. Possibly due to them sitting around for an hour after cooking. Clearly we need more ovens so we can cook everything at once…

Garlic: good… but not completely caramelised.

Chard: well it’s green and from the garden.

Overall: exactly what you want from a Sunday roast!