Recipe: Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding

Serve with Thelema Rabelais 2013.

It’s a family favourite for good reason.

Serves 4

Ingredients:
1.5kg prime rib roast, on the bone
olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 carrots, roughly chopped
1 onion, quartered
1 leek, roughly chopped
a few sprigs thyme
1 tbsp (15ml) flour
¼ cup (60ml) white wine
1 cup (250ml) beef stock

For the Yorkshire pudding
1 cup (250ml) flour
pinch of salt
3 eggs
1 cup (250ml) milk
sunflower oil

Method:
Preheat oven to 190°C.

Rub beef with a little olive oil and season with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Heat a pan until hot and sear beef until well browned.

Place carrots, onion, leek and thyme in the bottom of a roasting tray and place seared beef on top. Transfer to oven and roast for half an hour per kilo for rare, adding another 15 minutes for medium rare.

Remove beef from oven, transfer onto a board and cover with foil. Allow to rest for 20 minutes, before carving.

To make gravy
Tilt the roasting tray slightly and spoon away most of the fat that has risen to surface.

Place tray with the cooked vegetables directly onto the stove top and add flour, stirring while scraping up all sediment that has gathered on the bottom.

Deglaze with wine and add stock, stirring until you achieve a good gravy consistency. (You may need to add more stock or water if gravy is too thick).

Season with salt and pepper and strain gravy through a sieve, discarding the mashed vegetables.

For the Yorkshire pudding
Place flour and salt into a bowl and make a well in centre.

Whisk together the eggs and milk and pour into the well, beating until you have a smooth and runny batter.

Increase oven temperature to 240°C.

Pour 1 tbsp of sunflower oil into the base of each muffin mould and place in oven for 10 minutes until smoking hot.

Remove from oven, pour in batter (2/3 full) and return to oven for about 15 minutes or until risen, golden brown and crispy.

Serve rare roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, peas and gravy.

Wine pairing:
You want to match the weight of the wine to the weight of the food. Opt for something big and bold like a straight-variety Cabernet Sauvignon or a Bordeaux-style red blend. You can afford to go with something quite tannic as meat protein is great at taming tannins.

• Recipe supplied by Source Food – a Cape Town-based food agency that specializes in experiential marketing. They will create a recipe or meal to communicate your brand’s message.