A roast beef (canga fil-forn) to eat your heart out! Tomato paste included.
Beef in Malta is a real treat and not eaten that often. However, growing up in Australia beef made up a large proportion of our main meals. We used to breed a few cows for our own consumption and the beef was used for barbecues (I did grow up in Australia of course), soups, frying, mince and everything else that you might think of. Roasts included.
A friend of my husbands from New York came over for dinner last Friday night and we thought that roast beef with roast vegetables would be the perfect meal. Easy to prepare for a Friday evening meal and little hassle was required once the roast was in the oven.
You might be seeing a bit of a theme with roasting meat and that is we like to add stock or liquid of some kind when we can. And we also then can’t help ourselves but add a spoonful or two of tomato paste. This recipe is no exception. When the meat is cooked this way and slow roasted, it is incredibly tender.
This is a pot roast and usually we also stuff the meat with even more meat. I have not done so this time. I actually don’t think you need to. The beef is great on it’s own. You can also add vegetables into the same roasting dish in the last hour of cooking. I prefer to cook my roast vegetables separately in this case which I have. Roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots were what I roasted (in another post) this time.
The herb of choice for this dish was thyme. You can use bay leaves instead or both. I prefer just to use thyme.
One last thing to mention is that the liquid that is left over once the beef has been roasted can be used to make gravy. Even better still it can be used as a sauce with pasta the following day.
This is the perfect roast beef.
- 1.5 kg roasting joint of beef
- 1 onion chopped
- 1 bulb of garlic, skin peeled and slightly crushed
- 2 carrots diced
- 1 celery stick diced
- 1 bunch fresh thyme
- 250 ml beef stock
- 100 ml red wine
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- Season the beef with salt and pepper.
- In a large roasting dish (which has a lid) seal the beef by frying lightly on all sides with some olive oil. Set aside.
- In the same dish add a little more olive oil and fry the onion for 10 minutes or until brown.
- Add in the garlic and small bunch of thyme and fry for a minute.
- Add the carrots and celery and fry for a further ten minutes.
- While the carrots and celery are frying, mix together the stock, wine and tomato paste.
- Preheat the oven to 150oC.
- Once the carrots and celery have been fried add in the liquid mixture.
- Bring to a boil and then remove from the stove top.
- Spread some more oil on the beef joint and season a little. Add into the dish. Cover with the lid.
- Place in the oven and cook for 3.5 hours (adjust time if using a smaller or larger piece of meat).
- Once the beef has been cooked, remove from the oven and let sit for ten minutes before serving.
- Serve with roast vegetables and possibly some green beans.