beef and chocolate (from 2nd March)

Not together, I hasten to add. But rather, a sublime piece of beef, simply roasted, which was perhaps the most succulent and tender, melting piece of that animal I had ever tasted, with perfect roast potatoes and slightly crunchy braised red cabbage. The beef came from the countryside, hacked off from a vast slab of the stuff that the butcher brought round one Saturday to the kitchen door, and it was absolutely amazing. And then, it was followed by the baked chocolate pudding out of Nigel Slater's kitchen diaries, perfectly translated. The girls swooned. And the best bit about it? With the exception of the cabbage and a green salad, it was all made by the boy.