Blade roast w/ fatty potatoes, stocky greens & hazelnuts, pear & St. Johann salad
We hope everyone has survived the brutal weather in Tasmania over these last few weeks. Indeed, more than a few of our stallholders bore the brunt of things. Power outages, trees down, flooding, and damaged infrastructure all feature in the wash-up from the – ongoing – calamity. Writing about fancy menus seems somewhat vacuous under the circumstances. However, the opposite is also true: encouraging everyone to get out, buy local produce, and cook it for people is as important now as ever. With that in mind, let’s deliver on part 2 of the first of Spring’s feasts.
Sides menu: fatty potatoes, stocky greens & hazelnuts, pear & St. Johann salad
We’ll start here with some assumed knowledge. We’re bringing you the feast we created, but it’s the principles we’re keen on here. If you’ve got your perfect roast potatoes dialled in over many years of experience, you’re bound to ignore our recommendations—more power to you. Nonetheless, you’ll have all the info you need for your cooking here, too.
We chose a Bintje for this. Peeled, halved, par-boiled and scuffed, and allowed to steam off. That is, rested after scuffing, which enables the scuffs to set, ensuring crispiness, as opposed to the soft starch running off with the warm fat. Liquify some leftover animal fat (take your pick; they’re all good), and drizzle it over the potatoes, and roast at two hundge until crispy. Confession time: we finished ours in the air fryer with exceptional results.
What do we call these? They’re blanched greens. Yes, but it’s what we do to them. Take some beef or chicken stock and reduce it until it’s almost a glaze. Use this glaze to wilt your greens of choice. Silverbeet, spinach, chard, beet leaves, cabbage, again take your pick. All good and all available at the market. You want your stock to be a sticky glaze, right at the time the greens are cooked perfectly. Add a knob of butter, emulsify, and add a crack of pepper. Sprinkle with chopped roasted hazelnuts. You’ll never blach greens again.
You’ve two options with a salad—pure and simple, or touches and details. This one is the former. Don’t chuck all the salad ingredients in a bowl and toss it around. The cheese will all drop to the bottom, the pear will clump, and the leaves will bruise. In short, you’ll ruin it. Instead, build your salad in your serving bowl. Start with your base leaves. We went with frisée and Castello Franco radicchio, but again, you can use your favourites. Chopped into fun chunks. Finely slice the pear, scatter over the leaves, and season with a bit of sea salt. Crumble over the St. Johann. Dress with EV olive oil, and a squeeze of lemon juice. That’s it. Don’t faff with it.
Blade Roast
This cut might be overlooked for a roast. Actually, before we proceed, we should state that this was, in fact more of a grill than a roast. The cut does stand up to roasting, though, and you should sear it off before roasting in any case, so we stand by the title. Moving on. We let a 1kg blade roast come to room temperature for two hours. In reality, it was more. But for food safety and legal reasons, we can only write two hours. This is important. Trying to get to an internal temp of ~38 degrees aint gonna happen from a starting point of 4 degrees in a dense muscle like this.
It went on a medium grill, for twelve minutes per side, with the lid closed (see, roasting!), and then finished monte au beurre – a traditional French technique where butter, garlic, and thyme are added to the pan and vigorous basting occurs – for two minutes per side. It was rested for 12 minutes to let the juices redistribute, ensuring maximum tenderness and moisture.
For the sauce, beef stock was reduced to a concentrated glaze, and the resting juices and butter were incorporated. Served sliced, medium-rare, with sauce over the top to pool in the serving plate. If you feel like getting your haute cuisine on, pick a heap of rosemary flowers to sprinkle over the top. They’re visually and aromatically potent, delivering a punchy rosemary nectar flavour. Layered on the meaty richness, this work a treat.
For real, this would stand up in any grill house anywhere in the world.
As spring hits, and with (hopefully) the worst of the weather behind us for another season, now is the perfect time to be out in the market, shopping for flavour and nutrient-dense foods that, with a few bits of easy cooking, will enrich your life greatly.
Thanks! See youse in the morning.