Stillroom Cookery boiled beef with carrots & horseradish.

This recipe is unique in building a sauce out of boiled beef stock with a roux, a good idea that makes the complimentary horseradish sauce possible. For the corned beef you could, if enterprising, use Grace Firth’s Stillroom Cookery spiced beef: The cure appears in the practical .

• about 3 lb corned (salt) beef
• 24 oz pale ale
• about 1 teaspoon allspice berries
• 2 or 3 bay leaves
• about 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• about 4 cups carrots, peeled and cut into batons measuring something like ½ x 3 inches
• 2 Tablespoons grapeseed or other neutral oil
• 2 Tablespoons flour (preferably Wondra)
• about 2 cups liquid from simmering the beef
• 2 or 3 Tablespoons grated fresh horseradish
• ½ cup heavy cream

1. Put the cured beef in a pot just big enough to hold it with the ale, allspice, bay and peppercorns with enough water barely to cover the meat.
2. Bring the liquid to a boil then immediately reduce to a simmer until a fork pierces the meat like butter, usually in about 1½ hours.
3. After ½ hour, dump the carrots into the pot. They should be tender coterminant with the beef.
4. When the beef is tender, put the oil in a heavy skillet over medium high heat. Once it simmers, whisk in the flour to make a roux, then slowly dribble about 2 cups of the cooking liquid from the beef into the skillet. Let the sauce boil, reduce it to a simmer, then add the horseradish and cream. Immediately reduce the sauce to the merest simmer.
5. Do not allow the sauce to boil after adding the cream or it will curdle.

Notes:

-Firth boils her beef in water without the ale: The choice is yours.

- The original recipe adds potatoes to the simmering beef with the carrots. We like them better cooked apart but, again, your choice.