It’s been so cold here, I had a craving for a hearty beef stew. It took much longer to prepare than I had anticipated (I did a double batch) but it’s definitely worth it in the end.
600g chuck steak (you’ll need to trim off the thick fat and cut in to 1cm cubes – ending up with about 500-550g)
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1.5 teaspoons of garlic – freshly minced
6 purple French shallot onions – peeled, cut in to 1cm chunks
200g finely diced bacon
3 level tablespoons of plain flour
440ml can of Guinness
4 tablespoons tomato paste (salt reduced)
750ml stock – I used beef, but any good stock will do (salt reduced)
3 medium carrots – peeled, halved, cut into 1cm pieces
2 long outer stalks of celery – peeled, halved, cut into 1cm pieces
2 medium zucchini – peeled, halved, cut into 1cm pieces
Optional #1 250g baby potatoes – cut into 1cm chunks *exclude if making into pie
Optional #2 1 cup frozen peas
2 bay leaves
3 thyme sprigs
Freshly chopped parsley for garnish
Salt & Pepper to taste
Method:
Ok. This is the bit that takes the longest
In a large pan or the bottom of a large pot, heat the oil and fry off the meat until it caramelises. This can take up to 15 mins. The meat will release loads of water. Just be patient. Keep moving the meat about until the water evaporates and the meat is caramelised.
Remove from the pan/pot and set aside.
Caramelised chuck steak
When the pan is hot again, add the finely chopped bacon and fry until crispy. Then add the French shallots and cook for about 3 minutes, until they begin to soften.
Bacon and French shallots
Add the carrots, fry until they begin to soften. Then the celery. Cook for a few minutes more.
Adding the carrots and celery
Add the beef, then sprinkle the flour over the top, stirring thoroughly for a few minutes to cook the flour through for about 1 minute.
Sprinkle the flour over and cook through thoroughly
Add the Guinness. Cook for 2 mins.
Stir through the tomato paste, garlic, stock.
Add the baby potatoes. Omit this step if you are making this stew for a pie.
Add the bay leaves and thyme sprigs.
Bring to the boil, then turn down to low for 2 hours. Lid on.
After 2 hours, stir in the zucchini. Bring up to medium heat and cook for another 45-60 mins – until the zucchini is tender and the sauce has reduced and thickened.
If you are turning this in to a pie, add the peas 25 minutes before the end.
When you are happy with the consistency of the sauce, the meat is tender, the veggies are cooked through. Serve and enjoy.
Ready!
Eat on its own, with a generous garnish of freshly chopped parsley. – a good hunk of fresh buttered bread stick would be nice to dip and enjoy.
Serve on rice or mashed potato.
Use a pie machine to turn into pies – short crust on the bottom and puff on the top – frozen pastry works just fine!
Pot pie – fill a casserole dish or individual ramekins, top with puff pastry, brush with egg wash – bake until golden.
Make Beef and Guinness puff pastry triangles. Make sure the sauce is really thick. Leave a steam hole on the top. Egg wash and bake.
Sometimes GF cakes are disappointing. A friend put me on to the Woolworths Brand GF mix and it’s pretty good. Avoid the icing mix it comes with – it’s sickly sweet.
So – lets pimp these cupcakes!
Woolworth Gluten Free vanilla cake mix. If you’re going to make a round Victoria Sponge style – use two boxes, one for each half to sandwich together. DISCARD THE ICING MIXTURE!! Make nice icing from scratch. The icing mix is horribly sweet.
It’s really important that you follow the instructions on the box. If it says mix with electric beaters for 2 minutes. You’ve got to do the full two minutes. Trust me!
Preheat a fan forced oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
As per the instructions, I added 60g melted unsalted butter, 150ml full cream milk, 2 large eggs.
I then added the zest of half a large lemon.
Mix well.
I lined a muffin tin with patty pans and used a spring loaded ice cream scoop to ensure there was the same amount of batter for each cupcake.
At the last minute I grabbed some frozen blackberries from the freezer and pushed 2 or 3 into each cupcake.
**If I was using blueberries or raspberries, I would have folded them through at the very last minute so that they don’t melt and bleed through the mixture.
Bake until cooked through and golden – this was approx 18-20 mins for my oven.
While they were cooking, I whipped up a quick batch of cream cheese icing –
125g softened cream cheese at room temp
3/4 cup icing sugar
65ml cream
A tiny dot of vanilla bean paste
Mix well with an electric hand mixer until light and fluffy.
When the cupcakes are cool, you can ice them. I put the icing in a zip lock bag. Squeeze into one corner of the bag. Snip the little tip off, and when you’re happy with the width, pipe away to your hearts content. I also added a few white chocolate drops to make the flowers pretty.
Of course, it didn’t go to plan. I accidentally added double the rice. Then had an unexpected phone call for two hours and when I came back it was no longer soup – it was practically risotto! Well, it would have been a no stir risotto if I’d used Arborio rice. So, you’ve got two options. Soup or no-stir-risotto. It’s up to you! I’ll gone too the directions for both.
SoupNo stir risotto. This is jasmine rice. Next time I’d use Arborio if I wanted no-stir-risotto.
Ingredients:
3 leeks. Halved. Rinsed. Finely chopped
2 large celery stalks. Finely chopped.
1 medium peeled carrot. Finely diced.
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons butter
6 cups of stock. Fresh is better. Powdered is absolutely fine. (I used 500ml stock. 1L water and veggie stock powder) because that’s what was in the cupboard.
5-6 large chicken thighs. Skinless. (Approx 550g)
Soup – 3/4 cup jasmine rice
No-stir-risotto – 1 cup Arborio rice (and an extra cup of boiling water)
3/4 cup finely chopped flat leaf parsley – stalks and all
1/4 cup finely chopped dill – stalks and all
Salt to taste – depends on the salt content of the stock
Pepper – I used a heaped tablespoon of Aleppo Pepper. It’s magical. But if you can’t source it, freshly ground black pepper will be fine. Just less magical!
1 lemon – zest and juice
Method:
Heat olive oil medium-high heat in a large pot.
Add leeks, celery, and carrot salt. Stir for about 5 mins until leek is soft and carrots are softening.
Add the butter and the garlic and stir for another 5 minutes.
Add stock, water, and chicken. Bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to medium-low and cover, simmering for 30-45 minutes, until chicken is very tender and cooked through.
Remove chicken with tongs and set on a cutting board.
Soup: Add jasmine rice and return the heat to a low simmer, cover with lid, and cook for 20minutes, until rice is tender.
No-stir-risotto: add the Arborio rice and the extra cup of boiling water. Bring to the boil. Put the lid on. Turn off the heat completely and leave to sit for 30 minutes.
Roughly chop the chicken. Return the chicken and chopped herbs to the rice. Stir though. Add the Aleppo pepper, lemon zest and juice. Stir through thoroughly. Taste for seasoning, add salt if required.
Of course I didn’t manage to follow it to the letter – so here’s what I did…
Ready to carve!
Ingredients:
1 large head of cauliflower
1 bottle of olive oil – don’t worry you (probably) won’t use the whole thing
Salt and pepper
Yoghurt dressing – 1/2 cup whole milk yoghurt, 1 minced garlic clove, 2 tablespoons olive oil, juice of half a lemon, 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin, 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander, 1/4 teaspoon tumeric, 1 pinch of chilli powder or cayenne, 1 tablespoon maple syrup
Garnish – freshly chopped parsley and mint and coriander, a sprinkle of roasted pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds
Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius in a fan forced oven
Cheat #1. Steam the cauliflower for 25-30 mins in the microwave as your oven comes up to temperature
Drizzle 1½ tablespoons of the olive oil over the cauliflower and use your hands to coat it evenly. Sprinkle with salt and roast for 40 minutes
After 40 mins, remove from the oven temporarily in order to –
Pour another 1½ tablespoons of olive oil and the lemon juice over the cauliflower, especially into the crevices. Return the cauliflower to the oven and roast for another 15 minutes.
Remove the cauliflower from the oven and spread 1/2 of the yogurt sauce all over. Roast for another 15 minutes.
Remove the cauliflower from the oven. It should be tender outside and fork-tender inside. Transfer to a nice serving dish. Baste the cauliflower with the pan justices. Top the cauliflower with the rest of the sauce and sprinkle with the herbs and seeds. Carve.
Well, I am so glad I was brave and tried something new. Perfect winter warmer. Humming with spice. So fragrant. It’s a nice alternative for a flavour surprise.
Simmering away…Garnished and ready to eat!
Bolognese is something I’m rather finicky about… but I saw Marion’s video pop up on Facebook and I was feeling brave on a cold cold night. https://www.marionskitchen.com/marions-spaghetti-bolognese/ – here is her original recipe for full credit.
So, my version…
Serves 4 – easily doubled to serve more or pop some in the freezer.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon vegetable oil.
500g mince – I prefer equal parts veal/pork or beef/pork
1/2 onion – very finely diced
1 medium carrot, peeled and grated
1 heaped tablespoon of tomato paste
400g tin of crushed/diced tomatoes
Refill 400g tin with water
1 tsp stock powder – I used Massel veggie stock because it was close to hand. Any stock will do.
1 large garlic clove – minced/crushed
1 whole Star anise
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs of thyme
1 sprig of Rosemary
1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes
1.5 tablespoons of soy sauce
1/4 cup full cream milk
2 heaped tablespoons of grated Parmesan
Zest of half a lemon
Fresh basil and grated Parmesan to serve
Method:
STEP 1 Heat the tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the mince and spread it out in the pan. Season with a sprinkle of salt and allow to sear for 3-4 minutes or until you get a nice deep colour on the bottom of the mince. Then break the mince up with your spatula.
STEP 2 Add the onion,m and carrot. Mix through and cook for 5 minutes to allow the onion to soften. Then add the garlic. Stir through the tomato paste until well combined. Then pour in the crushed tomatoes and the stock. Add the star anise, bay leaves, chillies, thyme, rosemary, soy sauce. Turn the heat to low, cover with a lid and simmer for 60 minutes, being sure to check that the mixture doesn’t become too dry…if it does just stir through a little water.
STEP 3 Remove the lid and stir through the milk. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Use tongs to remove the star anise, bay leaves, thyme and rosemary stalks. Remove from heat.
STEP 4 To serve, add the spaghetti straight from the boiling water into the bolognese sauce (do this in a separate clean pan if you’re not using the full amount of sauce). Add a little of the pasta cooking water, the parmesan cheese, and the lemon zest. Stir the pasta and sauce over high heat for a few minutes until thick and glossy. Serve with fresh basil and more Parmesan.
This one was actually without spinach. Just ricotta, Parmesan, spring onion, garlic, basil. But I didn’t manage to get a photo of the spinach and ricotta ones before they were all eaten. Sorry!
250g chopped frozen spinach. Thawed and squeeze out all liquid
250g ricotta
Zest of half a lemon
1 spring onion – halved and finely chopped
1/3 cup Parmesan
Salt & Pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon freshly minced/micro plane garlic
A couple of finely shredded basil leaves
3 short rust pastry sheets – base
3 puff pastry sheets – tops
Makes 12 pies
Method:
Preheat the pie machine
Mix all ingredients together with a fork until evenly distributed
Line the pie machine with short crust pastry bases
Use a 1/3 measuring cup to distribute the filling
Place the puff pastry tops on
Close the lid
Wait 6-8 minutes until golden brown and cooked theough
750g chopped spinach (thawed frozen spinach works fine)
75g cashews – whoops. Totally forgot these
500g halloumi, cut into bite sized pieces
Rice bran oil spray for frying the haloumi
4 tablespoons of vegetable or rice brain oil for frying the spices/onion etc
3 teaspoons cumin seeds – I used ground
3 teaspoons garam masala
1.5 onions – peeled and diced
6 cloves garlic, peeled and diced
Same amount ginger, peeled and diced (as the garlic)
2 tomatoes, chopped
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 level teaspoon of chilli flakes
3/4 cup vegetable or chicken stock
Serve with a dollop of natural yoghurt and a wedge of lemon
Nice on buttered basmati rice with toasted cumin seeds and some naan
Method:
I totally skipped the first step by accident and I didn’t even have cashews – but this is what you’re supposed to do –
In a blender – the spinach, 50ml warm water, the cashews
…. so mine was more like a spinach curry stew. Next time I’d blend half the mixture and keep half the spinach leaves for texture.
Fry the halloumi pieces until golden on both sides adding a little oil to the pan if needed (you won’t need much oil). Set aside.
Golden fried cheese – is there anything better?
Dry fry the cumin and garam masala in a frypan.
Add oil and then add the onion, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, tomato paste and chilli and fry for 5 minutes. Add the stock and spinach and simmer for another 5 minutes. Add the halloumi and serve.
Serve with a good dollop of natural yoghurt and a squeeze of lemon. Nice on some buttered basmati rice with toasted cumin seeds and fresh naan.
