Corned Beef and Buttered Vegetables

The ultimate autumn/winter meal. This recipe is written using 2 kg of beef, which will feed six people and leave enough for a couple of toasted sandwiches. 

For the spice paste

• 1 tablespoon juniper berries
• I tablespoon black peppercorns
• I clove of garlic, chopped

To make the spice paste, grind the juniper berries and pepper with a mortar and pestle, then add the garlic and pound into a paste. Rub your spice paste on to the corned silverside (if it is salted, before the paste, soak for two hours fully immersed in a saucepan, change the water each hour), after applying the paste, cover with plastic wrap and let it sit overnight in the fridge.

For the Corned Beef

• 2 kg uncooked corned silverside
• 40 ml balsamic vinegar
• 100 g?1/3 cup tomato paste
• 300g brown sugar
• 6 bay leaves
• 200 ml chicken stock
• 500 ml water

Preheat your oven to 200C. Put the corned beef in a large cast iron pan or casserole dish, fat side down, with the vinegar, tomato paste, sugar, bay leaves, stock and water. Cover the pot with a lid and cook in the oven for about 1.5 hours. Check from time to time to make sure that it doesn't dry out, adding water as needed. While you're in there give your beef a baste with the cooking liquid. After about 1.5 hours take the lid off the pan and turn the beef so that the far side is facing up and cook for another hour - it is very important to keep on basting every fifteen minutes or so.

For the Buttered Vegetables

• 12 baby carrots
• 8 baby turnips
• 8 small new potatoes
• salt to your taste
• a knob of butter
• 1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
• a generous pinch of chopped parsley
• salt and freshly ground pepper

Meanwhile, make the buttered vegetables. Boil the vegetables in salted water. The carrots and turnips can be cooked together, if they are a similar size (8-12 minutes in boiling water), but cook potatoes separately (about 20 minutes starting with cold water). Place all of the hot vegetables in a bowl and gently toss in the butter, mustard, parsley and season with a little salt and pepper.

When the beef is cooked serve with the buttered vegetables. Any left over corned beef great in toasted sandwiches with a bit of mustard for lunch!