Restaurants

The cut : silverside
The dish: pot-roasted beef in red wine with red onion marmalade
Silverside is a lean, boneless and relatively cheap roasting joint cut from the rump, specifically the outside of the thigh. It’s so called because of the fibrous skin which runs along the edge of it. The butcher will trim this off for you – it isn’t edible. Sometimes silverside is sliced to make minute steaks, and in Australia it’s synonymous with corned beef. (‘Corned’ has nothing to do with corn, by the way – it refers to an ancient curing process whereby coarse ‘corns’ or pellets of salt were rubbed into the beef to keep it from spoiling.) Corned beef has its origins in Irish peasant cooking, and you don’t have to look very hard to find post- or even pre-ironic attempts to appropriate it as a ‘classic’ dinner party tour de force. Rick Stein has a recipe for ‘Irish corned beef with cabbage’ in his ‘Food Heroes’. ‘Add some hot mustard, if you wish,’ he advises at the end. Well, yes – the flavour’s got to come from somewhere, hasn’t it?

What else can you do with silverside? You can spice it – cook it with cinnamon and orange juice, perhaps. But that feels too similar to the brisket recipes we explored a few months back. I’m beginning to despair until I stumble across Delia’s ‘pot-roasted beef in red wine with red onion marmalade’ in her ‘Winter Collection’. It’s laughably simple: you pot-roast your browned meat in a pint or so of cheap claret with some fresh thyme and bay leaves; remove the joint; then reduce the leftover liquor with butter and cornflour paste. This would be heaven in itself, but the onion marmalade transports you to… Well, if you really want to know it transports me back to 1999 and an eccentric, long since closed restaurant in Herne Hill which used to serve orange marmalade with any dish on the menu as a way of punishing the diner for having the audacity to actually order food rather than refills of nasty lager. Although come to think of it, orange marmalade might work quite well with this.
John O’Connell
Feature continues

How to cook it
Preheat the oven to 140C/285F/
Gas 1. For the beef, heat a large knob of butter in a heavy casserole dish with a lid and brown 1.15kg of silverside all over. Add the herbs, 425ml of wine and season. Bring to a simmer, then place the lid on and roast in the oven for three hours, or until the beef is cooked through.

While the beef is cooking, prepare the marmalade. Fry 350g of chopped red onions in butter with a sprig of thyme for ten minutes, or until softened. Add 225ml of red wine and 55ml of red wine vinegar. Bring to a simmer, then turn the heat right down and let it cook slowly with the lid off for 45 minutes, or until all the liquid has evaporated. Remove the meat from the casserole, wrap in foil and leave to rest for ten minutes. Meanwhile, discard the thyme and reduce the liquid over a high heat. Mix the cornflour and a little butter together to form a smooth paste, then gradually whisk into the liquid in the casserole, until the sauce is smooth and slightly thickened. Serve with the pot-roast and onion marmalade.