Recipe - Boiled Beef with Root Vegetable Mash and Horseradish Sauce

I can already hear the groans from the back of the class - "Not another bloody Swedish recipe?!?". Tough titty - my blog, my heritage and my choice! ;-)

Yet again, a dish from the Swedish family of dishes known as husmanskost. I'm not sure if this would count as an every day dish or if it would be saved for more special occasions. The main reason being that it is based around beef, nothing they'd roll out to cook every day.

One thing that was bound to make me not want to head to the canteen for lunch during my years at school was the prospect of root vegetable mash. I can't remember exactly why but something about root vegetable mash that I definitely didn't like. These days though I'm more than happy to cook and eat it.

Whether or not we were served horseradish with our root vegetable mash is something I cannot remember. Somehow I doubt it, since that most likely would have made even school lunch root vegetable mash edible.

Whenever we drove up to Göteborg (Gothenburg to you non Swedish speaking) we would pass field after field of horseradish next to the motorway. I seem to remember that rather a large proportion of Swedish horseradish is grown and processed in that region. But I might of course be wrong about that.

Well, let's keep this short and sweet today. Have a look at the picture up top and the recipe below and maybe you'll find inspiration to try this instead of your bog standard roast some upcoming Sunday?

One final note before we head over to the recipe. If you have any leftover beef you can always dice it up the next day and fry it up with some diced potatoes and onions for a classic Swedish hash.

Ingredients (serves 4)
800g piece of topside beef, trimmed
1 yellow onion, peeled and roughly cut
1 carrot, peeled and roughly cut
100g celeriac, peeled and roughly cut
Parsley stalks
10 white pepper corns
Salt
1 bay leaf

Root vegetable mash
6 potatoes
3 carrots
2 parsnips
200 - 250 ml milk
1 tbsp butter
Salt
Pepper
Chopped parsley

Horseradish sauce
400 ml beef stock
50 ml cream
2 tbsp corn flour
Salt
Pepper
1 tbsp grated fresh horseradish

Method
Put the beef  in a pan and cover it with water. Bring the water to a boil, remove the pan from the heat and pour off the water.

Once again cover the beef with cold water. Now add the onion, carrot, celeriac, parsley, white pepper corns, salt and bayleaft. Pop a lid on the pan and bring the water to a simmer. Lets this simmer for about 90 minutes.

Root vegetable mash
Peel the root vegetables and cut roughly. Put them in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and cook until softened. Drain the water and mash the vegetables. Stir in warm milk, use enough to get the consistency you're after. Add butter, salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the chopped parsley.

Horseradish sauce
Bring the stock to a boil. Mix cream and corn flour then stir this into the stock. Let this simmer for a couple of minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the grated horseradish just before serving.

Enjoy