Best Corned Beef/ Silverside on the Planet.

Take the corned beef/silverside out of the plastic wrapping and wash it off in cold water. (makes it less slippery and easier to handle).

Take the whole cloves and stick the little spike part of each clove well into the meat. (sometimes you need to make a little hole into the meat with the point of a veggie knife in order to get it in). Stud the entire piece of meat evenly with cloves, using more than 40 of them if necessary).

Put the golden syrup into the bottom of a large tall saucepan (I use a big soup pot).

Put the meat into the pot, add the bay leaf and pepper, halve the oranges and squeeze them to get some juice out over the meat, drop the squeezed oranges into the pot as well.

Cover with water and simmer for 1.5 to 2.5 hours depending on how big the piece of meat is -- even a small bit does really well on low for 1.5-2 hours. Top up the water if necessary.

Take out and rest the meat for 10 minutes. Pick out what cloves you can (they are really there for flavour, not to be eaten) Cut across the grain. (if you do it the wrong way your "slice" of meat will fall into 1000 tiny pieces so just turn the meat around and cut at right angles to your first cut if that happens.).

Cut it into thin slices. Serve with mustard sauce (if you can already keep your hands from nibbling it off plate).

Prepare to taste corned beef like you've never tasted it before -- ummmmm --.

Serves 4 in theory, but I have to confess that DH and I we could eat one small one each. <blush> LOL nibble, nibble, just a little bit more, nibble, nibble, opps , gone!

Served cold, it also makes great sandwiches -- but in our house there's rarely enough left over to make a sandwich :).