Recipe LXXXVII - Winter Warmer: Beef Stew

It's -5°C outside and the snow lying on the ground is so charming to look at, but spend a few minutes bringing up the wood for the fire and you soon realise how nipple-hardeningly chilled you become in such a short time. For that reason, I'm making a beef stew with all the necessary accoutrements to keep the kitchen warm for a few hours - a slow oven cook. Beef shank is quite sinewy and full of marrow and fat, so cooking it in a few minutes is a very bad idea. But leave it for several hours in a casserole dish on a slow cook and the beef will do the hard work: its flavour will ooze, its fat will run, its marrow will shrink and along with the vegetables you add, the whole thing will be worth the wait at the end of the day. Bear in mind, though, you need a lot of meat to make it, as it shrinks and falls from the bone.

Ingredients:
1kg to 1.5kg beef shank
salt and pepper
2 bottles of dark beer (I used Czech Březňák because I love its smoothness, but British or Irish stout, German or Belgian dark beers will also do)
2 onions, quartered
Feel free to use your own range of vegetables. I used these below:
7 large mushrooms, whole
1 fennel, sliced
5 carrots, in large pieces
5 potatoes, cut to size, parboiled
5 cloves of garlic
1 bay leaf
6 sprigs of rosemary
10 whole peppercorns
Walnut oil, if you have it, otherwise olive oil or ordinary
Optional: sugar, cinnamon or sultanas

Required:
A high-sided frying pan
A casserole dish with a lid



Instructions:
Put the beef, well-salted and peppered, into a high-sided frying pan and fry on a gentle heat for a few minutes to seal both sides. Leave it on the side in the casserole dish. Put the water on to parboil your potatoes. Then put your vegetables, bay leaf, rosemary and peppercorns into the pan and sweat gently on a low flame for ten to fifteen minutes.



Put in your potatoes and slowly add the beer, letting it heat up to simmering point.



Leave it for a further ten minutes, then pour it over the beef in the casserole dish, and put the whole thing in the oven for 6 to 9 hours.



Not only does your house smell marvellous for a whole afternoon and evening, but the results are very rewarding.



To make the flavour just right, after a couple of hours, take it out for a brief time to add whatever it may need. This could include sweetening it, to take the bitterness of the beer away. You can use sugar and/or sultanas and/or cinnamon, but it's your call. Anyhow, enjoy the anticipation, which is just as good as the eating!

Recipe LXXXIV - Slow Roasted Lamb in a Rosemary and Red Wine Sauce

Making Christmas dinner for everyone is my yearly task and every year I try and outdo the main course from the year before. If I think of something new, I try to add to the other courses. At the weekend, I tried out my new enamel roasting tin, to see if it gives me inspiration for this year. And you know what? It wasn't bad. Here are the results.


Ingredients:
500g-700g lamb (leg, shoulder, etc.) with the bone
A slice of butter, kneaded with rosemary and whole black peppercorns
Half a bottle of red wine (Greek or south Italian, for a fruity, less acidic taste
4 tomatoes (fresh or tinned)
8-15 potatoes, fairly whole
4 large carrots
2 bay leaves
3 onions, quartered

Instructions:
Turn the oven on to about 150°C. Take your roasting tin and coat it in a layer of butter. Although it is enamel and self-basting, this will make sure, as producers are a little over-confident in their own products' capabilities. So, peel your potatoes, cut your carrots. You can parboil them or you can leave them unboiled and put them later straight in the roaster. Anyhow, take the butter, rosemary and peppercorns, and grind into a consistency. Spread it out on the top of your lamb and put it in the roaster, alone, for 15 minutes.



Put two of the onions, the carrots, the potatoes and bay leaves in the roaster and cook for a further half and hour to 45 minutes.



Before you remove it from the oven, get your tomatoes and red wine, plus more rosemary and the last of the onions. Give them a good blitzing in the mixer.



Pour the liquid around the outside of the roaster, leaving the lamb untouched.



Put it back in the oven for at least an hour, removing the lid for the last 20 minutes and serve the meat thickly sliced.

Recipe LXIX - Parsley Sauce (on fish)

I'm not a great fan of fish. However, my favourite restaurant in the world is under London Bridge and is called "Fish! " and if you know someone who has a fishphobia, that's the place to take them. Their desserts are delicious too, and I'll do one of them soon. This tremendous English recipe, though, is so easy to make and thankfully gives you time to do the rest of your cooking.

Ingredients:
400ml full cream milk
1 bunch of parsley, chopped (keep some of the stalks!!)
1 small onion
60g butter
Up to 150g plain flour
1 bay leaf
A mix of whole and crushed peppercorns
Some nutmeg or mace
a pinch of salt

Instructions:
Cut up your parsley, keeping some of the stalks. They are very, very flavoursome and give such a kick to the sauce. Let's be frank - you an either use a knife to cut it up or you can stick it in the blitzer. I stuck it in the blitzer.
Slice the onion in half. A small one is good as they're much more pungent. Put some milk into a saucepan, and add the parsley stalks, onion, peppercorns, nutmeg (or mace), the bay leaf and salt. Then very slowly heat it up to simmering point. Milk is notoriously volatile boiling, so you need to do this carefully.

 

After a few minutes of simmering, strain the larger bits out and leave the flavoured milk to cool. You can do your fish now. *See after the last photo below for a frying tip for your fish.

 

Once you are almost ready with the fish, it's time to make the sauce, and it'll take just a couple of minutes. Put your butter in a saucepan and in Béchamel-style, add the flour until it thickens. Once this happens, add the milk back bit-by-bit, allowing the fluidity to return, whisking as you pour it in.

 

Add the parsley to the mixture and continue to whisk.

 

Pour it on your potatoes and fish. I made mine very thick, but if you have a lot of visitors and you need a lot more, you just need to add more milk as you whisk. It won't affect the overall flavour. Some people add some lemon juice but I think it's fabulous without.

*TIP: If you decide to fry your fish, cut up some garlic and fry it in the olive oil for a couple of minutes before you add the fish. Remove the garlic first, as it'll just go black and give your fish a burned flavour.

Recipe LXI - English Peppered Venison Stew

Midsummer is the festival of virility and fertility, when we men are supposed to show off our hunting skills and prove our eligibility. So I hunted down a stag. Well no, I pulled a pack of venison meat out of the freezer at the supermarket, and spent yesterday evening making this, a midsummer-themed, truly English dish, which smells glorious in the oven and tastes sumptuously divine. It is therefore a paradox, that at midsummer, I am making a stew from it, but such has been the adversity of the weather, that putting it on the barbecue would seem reckless, especially as I am typing this in the middle of yet another shower of rain as a clap of thunder echoes outside in the valley.

Ingredients:
500g-800g diced venison
5 to 10 shallots, whole
5 carrots, sliced
1 large onion, finely diced
5 potatoes, sliced or quartered
Other root vegetables are acceptable, like parsnips, turnips or celeriac
Most of a bottle of red wine
1 cup of red wine vinegar
5 cloves of garlic
1 small can of tomato purée
2 tbsp redcurrant jelly
3 or 4 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 cloves
3 bay leaves
15 peppercorns, crushed
3 tbsp cinnamon
4 tbsp plain flour



Instructions:
Take the plain flour and mix with some crushed peppercorns and some salt. TIP: use a plastic bag for this, tossing the contents to make everything stick well. Heat the oven to 180°C.
Put some butter and oil into your casserole dish and fry the meat until all sides are browned and sealed. Remove the meat to a side plate for a while, keeping the oil going (add more if necessary), and put the shallots in it to brown. Once they have softened (4-5 minutes), add the onions and garlic. Then put the tomato purée in, and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add the red wine vinegar and wine itself. Allow it to boil before you add the redcurrant jelly, thyme, the rest of the pepper and the bay leaves, and reintroduce the meat. You should make sure that the liquid covers all the ingredients. If not, add some beef stock or more wine, depending on your taste.



Put it in the oven for up to 3 hours, but check after one and a half, as the heat may cause the liquid to dry up. Serve with cauliflower cheese or green beans.

Recipe LV - Beef Dopiaza

Food of Indian origin is my passion. If I were told I was going to have to spend a year on a deserted island and could only take three items, I would take my spices with me as item number three. Item number two would be the kitchen knives and item number one would be a giant box of matches. In any case, the spices are very important, as they have different functions, depending what combination you use them in, how you cook them and what other ingredients are also in it. Sauces are often the best thing about this type of food, and in this classic dish, the sauce is the star.

Ingredients:
500g diced beef (both small and large pieces)
3 onions (two chopped finely, one large, quartered)
2 small red peppers with the seeds left in, or if you want it extra spicy, 3 dried chillies
10 cardamom pods
7-10 garlic cloves, put through the crusher
10 black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
2 cloves
1 can of tomatoes
A dribble of water if necessary

Spices:
Cumin, coriander, turmeric, chili powder, ginger (about a tablespoon of each, all ground)
Fresh or dried coriander leaves to season at the end



Instructions:
Pour some oil into a high-sided frying pan or casserole and put it on medium flame. Fry the quartered onion pieces until they are nice and soft. With a slotted spoon, take them out, keeping the temperature of the pan consistent. Add the red peppers (or chilis), the shelled cardamom, peppercorns, bay leaves and cloves, stirring constantly.



Once they start giving off their aroma, add the other onion, the garlic, ginger, coriander and cumin. Before it starts to dry up, add the tomatoes and put on to simmer mode for a few minutes.



Then add the beef and the onions you removed earlier and continue to simmer for a good half an hour to an hour. The longer you leave it, the more the flavours will run.



Towards the end, put in some green coriander, and serve with Basmati rice.



Enjoy!