Braised Birthday Beef and other delicacies

: Mincing garlic – it’s the simple things in life, really 🙂

: Gremolata, b*tches! A delicious mix of garlic, parsley, lemon zest, garlic, rosemary and garlic.

: Shoulder of beef, lovingly sold to me by an old jewish butcher who seemed rather enthusiastic about the meal I was going to cook.

: Plate o’ greens: blanched spinach, leeks and a mixture of minced fresh sage, basil and parsley. This will be added to the risotto.

: Shitakes and topinambours! My personal favourite of the evening, I decided we did not have enough dishes, so I created this one on the fly, mid-way.

: Conga line of refreshingness – tasty salad of fennel, navel oranges, avocado and fresh goat cheese, garnished with fresh chives

: Braised rosemary beef with tomatoes and kalamata olives, garnished with the gremolata and served with a Green Herb Mascarpone Risotto

A note on the mushroom-topinambour dish: I espied the topinambours (also called sunchokes or Jerusalem artichoke, even though they are nothing remotely like an artichoke) in my friend’s fridge. He had dismissed them as potatoes or some other uninteresting root vegetable, but my eyes widened in excitement as I excitedly proclaimed “you have topinambours!” The first time I had this was at Terre à Terre, a fantastic vegetarian restaurant in Brighton with friends many moons ago.

For this dish, I steamed the topinambours and made them into a purée with just a hint of parmesan. The shitake mushrooms were sauteed pleasantly in marsala wine as well as the water from the mushroom soak. A touch of kosher salt, and then delicately placed upon a thick smear of the topinambour purée, topped with fresh ground pepper and fresh chives. Miam!

Not shown here were some particularly juicy oysters on the half shell, we just ate them too quickly. The birthday girl was ecstatic and the evening was a success.