English Roast Beef!

English Roast Beef was Martha Stewart's choice for this year's perfect Christmas Day dinner!

As American's do not have a traditional Christmas dish - turkey being The Bird for Thanksgiving - this was Martha's pick on her Christmas Special programme.

And she brought along an English chef to show how to cook it. Her chef had some different touches to what I would call our standard Sunday roast.

First, she rubbed a mustard mix into the top of the meat before cooking.

Second, she 'scored' the potatoes after lightly boiling them, but my mother taught me to shake them in the saucepan, which scuffs the surfaces all round and never fails to produce beautifully crisp potatoes.

Third, and this was the killer! she used the meat juices and fat to roast the potatoes.

Now I'm sure that this makes for very tasty potatoes but in our house, if I had to pour the meat juices onto the potatoes thereby robbing the gravy, there would be fireworks to rival Sydney harbour on New Year's Eve!!!!

No! No! No! A culinary faux pas, unless you're one of those people who don't like lashings of gravy!!!

The enormous Yorkshire puds, though - 'make sure the tin is piping hot' - would have drawn pleasure from any Northerner worth their 'by gum's.

And by the time she'd spooned the brussel sprouts around the glistening rack of beef, all we could do was bask in patriotic pride as this symbol of culinary excellence was paraded before
not just the citizens of San Francisco - but all America!