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Buongiorno, bonjour and “g’day”! (don't you like how they're all the same thing? ~ who knew Australian vernacular was so cosmopolitan???).

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It’s your old pal Kit (Christof) Fennessy here. I've been writing this blog with your help for ten years, and there's over a hundred and fifty recipes, restaurant reviews of Australia and around the world, and general gourmet articles in these pages for you to fritter away your idle hours on.

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Now, what's on the bill of fare today?

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Le Rosbif

 
Bonjour geezers!

Of course many know the tale of how the Rosbif got his name.  English soldiers fighting in France, back in the day would order “roast beef”, because they couldn’t stand all that foreign garlicy muck.  The locals started rolling their eyes and gesticulating over their shoulders complaining about les “rosbifs”.

Further research into the etymology of the word “rosbif” reveals everyone being very vague. Some place it to the nineteenth century, others to the period of the Crusades or Middle Ages.  Me?  I can tell you exactly.  1045: the day Edward the Confessor went home to visit his mother in the rainy part of France and complained about the food.

And how very true it is that the English love their beef (and also like complaining)!

On going on my working holiday a Angleterre, their traditional Sunday roast revealed that an avoidance of garlic and “that foreign muck” has made for several hundred years of concentrating on how to do one thing well – as always a recipe for success!

The piece of meat central to the whole experience, to sit cheek by jowl with your jowls, is of course the roast beef. I’ve tried differing ones with varying success, but last weekend pushed the envelope and did a traditional English roast (OK, I couldn’t come at the brussel sprouts), and learnt a thing or two about roasting beef…


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