Queens Birthday long weekend

One of our favourite things to do on the weekend is cook with really good produce and meats we haven't tried before. Therefore we headed out to Vics Meats at Botany, http://www.vicsmeat.com.au/ to load up our freezer for the month. As it was a long wet Queen’s birthday weekend and there was no better way to spend it than to stay at home and cook up a feast.

We stopped by usual breakfast of a chicken roll and spring roll. The queue at both the Vics meats store and Hong Ha bread place was as usual long.

Cooked an amazing veal roast with potato gratin based from the Neil Perry cookbook ‘The food I love’.

Veal Roast

Ingredients

3-4 bone rack of milk fed veal

Sea salt

Extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 75C. Remove rack from the refrigerator a couple of hours before cooking and rub the rack with sea salt. Rub the rack with extra virgin olive oil and put into large roasting tin. Put in the preheated oven and turn the dish every 30 minutes. After an hour, check the core cooking temperature with a meat thermometer. As veal is less dense than beef due to the muscle structure, it doesn’t take as long to cook.

When the temperature of the veal reaches 58-60C depending whether you like it closer to medium to well done, remove it from the oven. Put a frying pan large enough to take the rack on the stove over high heat and pour a little extra virgin olive oil in. When oil is nearly smoking, add the rack and hold it with tongs so that all the flesh side gets a good browning.

Reduce the oven temperature to around 60C holding the door ajar if necessary and return the veal to the oven. Rest the rack for about 30 minutes before serving.

Potato Gratin

Ingredients

500g bintje or other waxy potatoes

250mL pure whipping cream

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

20g unsalted butter melted

Method

Peel and cut the potatoes into 2mm thick slices, covering the slices with cream to prevent discolouration. Season the potato slices with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Brush the base and side of a shallow baking tray with melted butter.

Remove the potato slices from the cream and overlap them in lines down the dish until 2-3cm deep. Drizzle a little cream between each layer. Pour any remaining cream over.

Bake at 180C for 50-60 minutes or until lightly browned and tender.

With a side of brussels and speck, yum yum.