Tag Archives: Beef

A Mid-Week Dinner

09 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by in Main Courses, Starters, Sweet Things

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PRAWNS WITH LEMON & GARLIC, SPINACH WITH PINE NUTS & RAISINS

RABO DE TORO SERVED WITH PLAIN BOILED POTATOES

CARAMELISED FIG CUSTARDS SERVED WITH CARDAMON SHORTBREAD BISCUITS

This didn’t seem like a complicated meal for mid-week when I cooked it the other week, but now that I am writing about it, there is quite a lot of work. I must have been in one of those Zen cooking moods.

Much of it is done in advance, which makes it feel less work. The oxtail stew is cooked the evening before and left to very slowly cool in the oven overnight, which lets it cook long and slow and so develop a rich flavour. I cooked enough stew so that there was enough not only for this meal, but also for making Fresh Pasta with Beef Ragout for my sisters the following weekend.

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I have jars of Caramelised Fig Jam, made from fruit from the farm last summer. So for the dessert, I only needed to mix an egg custard, put that in pots on top of the Fig Jam and then put the pots in the oven to cook and set.

But then I got into biscuit making mood. The custards are perfectly fine without the biscuits. But I had that yearning in my minds stomach for buttery, crunchy, sweetness with the gorgeous fragrance of cardamoms…..

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I am giving you the stew recipe today. You will get the starters and dessert tomorrow.

RABO DE TORO – OXTAIL STEW

Serves 6

6 pieces oxtail

2-3 tablespoons flour

salt and freshly ground black pepper

olive oil

4 cloves garlic – finely chopped

1 large onion – finely chopped

2 red peppers – cut into strips

2 large tomatoes – skinned and roughly chopped

half a bottle of full bodied red Spanish wine

1 clove

5allspice berries

Small piece of cinnamon bark

salt

freshly ground black pepper

Gremolata – finely chopped fresh garlic, flat leaved parsley and the finely grated zest of one lemon

Put the flour in a shallow dish and season very generously with salt and black pepper.

Heat 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil in a thick based casserole.

Coat the oxtail pieces in the seasoned flour and fry on a medium heat, turning each side until browned all over.

This may have to be done in two batches. The meat pieces will brown more easily if they are not crowded in the pan.

Add more oil as you go along if needed.

Remove the meat from the pan and put to one side.

Add the onions and garlic to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the peppers and continue cooking for about ten minutes until the onions are slightly browned.

Add the tomatoes and cook for a further five minutes scraping any flour stuck to the base of the pan into the sauce as it is moistened.

Put the meat back in the pan.

Add the wine. It should just come up to the top of the meat.

Heat to a simmer.

Put the clove and allspice berries into a thick based dry pan and heat slowly for five minutes or so to toast and bring out the flavour.

Grind to a powder with a pestle and mortar.

Add this to the stew with the piece of cinnamon.

Cover the casserole and put in a low oven, you want the sauce to be showing an occasional bubble but no more. For my oven this is 120C.

Leave to cook for 6 hours. Turn the oven off and leave to slowly cool.

Reheat at 180C the next day to serve.

Serve with plain boiled potatoes and gremolata sprinkled on top.

 

 

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An Autumn Lunch

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Main Courses, Starters, Sweet Things, Vegetable Dishes

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At this time of the year my southern Spanish vegetable garden is lush with green vegetables that in the north are considered spring vegetables. There are several varieties of lettuce and endive, Cima Di Rapa, crispy dark green chard, french beans, Mange-Toute and the sweetest baby courgettes……… So I want to feature this abundance in my meal. I dither between choosing to prepare a composed salad, or grilling some of the vegetables. In my other veg patch I find some small purple and white striped aubergines and a few asparagus spears. That helps me to make up my mind, grilled vegetables with a sweet and spicy pepper sauce. IMG_1390 My regular readers will know that I preserve whatever surplus I have of garden produce as I go along, so the sauce is based on a couple of these, the recipes for which you will find on previous blogs. SWEET AND SPICY PEPPER SAUCE Half a small jar of Red Pepper Salad 2 tablespoons Chilli Jam Juice of half a lemon Simply whizz together in the food processor The main course was Orechiette Pasta with Beef and Tarragon Meatballs in Mushroom Sauce. IMG_1389 BEEF & TARRAGON MEATBALLS WITH MUSHROOM SAUCE FOR 6 400 grams lean minced beef 2 garlic cloves – peeled 1 medium egg 25 grams dried breadcrumbs – preferably from good bread that you have dried and crumbed yourself Half a dozen sprigs of fresh tarragon Salt and freshly ground black pepper Plain flour Olive oil 100 grams fresh mushrooms, preferably ceps, but chestnut or oyster will do 20 grams dried ceps 300ml chicken stock Put the dried ceps in a small bowl and pour over enough boiling water to just cover. Leave to reconstitute. Crush the garlic cloves with a small amount of salt. Take the leaves off the tarragon stalks and chop finely. Put the minced beef in a bowl with the garlic, tarragon, breadcrumbs and egg. Mix thoroughly. Season with black pepper. Leave for about half an hour for the breadcrumbs to absorb moisture and bind the mix. Take small amounts of the minced beef mix and roll into balls and then roll in the flour. It is tedious to make the balls small, about 1.5 cm across is ideal, but they mix so much better with the pasta and are a perfect little mouthful this size that it is worth the effort. Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan and fry half the meatballs in one batch over a medium heat, turning from time to time to lightly brown them on all sides. Remove to a dish and fry the other half of the meatballs. Remove these too. While the meatballs are browning cut up the mushrooms into quite small pieces. Once the meatballs are out of the pan, add the mushrooms to it together with a little more oil if needed and gently fry them for about five minutes. Add the stock, soaked dried mushrooms and their liquid and bring to a simmer. Simmer for five minutes then add the meatballs and any juices that have seeped out of them. Simmer for five to ten minutes. Serve with pasta and parmesan cheese. For dessert, the Spanish classic, Cheese with Honey and Walnuts, the recipe appeared in a previous post. IMG_0389

Planning ahead

04 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Main Courses

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I had friends from England coming to stay for the weekend and wanted to invite more chums for dinner on the Friday night, but didn’t want to spend too much precious time away from my guests preparing the meal. I needed a menu where I could prepare much of the meal well in advance.  The obvious choice for the main course is a stew, which will only improve by having a day or two in the fridge to enable its flavours to deepen. My style of cooking is to keep it as simple as possible without compromising on flavour, so a well flavoured beef stew which only needs the accompaniment of a plain boiled potatoes or noodles, fits the bill.

In the storecupboard are some lovely dried ceps and chanterelles that my friends Ali and Peter brought back from one of their trips for me, so they will add richness and depth to my stew.

While checking through my storecupboard, I came across some mini pastry tartlets left over from Christmas, so I thought they could make the basis of the starter. Prawns bound together with egg custard and flavoured with chives fresh from the garden. There are plenty of fresh green leaves in the garden, rocket, coriander and various endives, with which to surround the tartlets.

And why not continue the storecupboard theme in the pudding? As fruit on the farm comes into season, we generally eat as much as possible fresh, but there are nearly always surpluses which if there is a lot would get preserved in syrup in jars, and if a small amount would be cooked and then frozen. Of the frozen there is a choice between red plums or caramelised pears. I fancy the tart plums with a crumble topping made in the usual way but with the addition of oats and crushed hazelnuts to add some extra texture and flavour. I did the crumbles in little individual ramekins so that once cooked all I needed to do was add a scoop of plain ice cream to them.BEEF AND CEP STEW

Pork fat, cut into tiny cubes

Stewing beef, preferably with some streaks of fat in it

Flour seasoned with plenty of salt and pepper

Dried ceps

Good stock

Stew vegetables – onion, carrot, garlic, celery, leek.

I have been deliberately vague about the amounts that you need in this recipe, as it depends on how many people you are feeding, and what size of appetites they have. Plus stew making is not an exact science, so you can add and substract depending on ingredients available and personal taste.

For this stew I wanted the flavour of plenty of vegetables in it, but without being able to see them. So to begin with  cut up all the stewing vegetables and added them to the stock in a large saucepan. Heat and then leave to simmer for at least half an hour or until the vegetables are very tender. Put the stock and vegetables through the coarse disk of a mouli so that you have a thin vegetable puree.

Put your mushrooms in a bowl and pour over enough boiling water to just cover them. Leave them to soak and reconstitute.

Next render the pork fat in a large shallow pan on a very low heat until all the fat has melted out of the pork.  Pork fat is great  for giving extra flavour, so when you are trimming pork of its excess fat, cut it into little cubes as you go along and keep it in small amounts in the freezer.

Cut the beef into pieces roughly 5 cm by 3 cm. Dust liberally with the seasoned flour and then brown and seal the pieces in the fat, turning to make sure that they are sealed on all sides. If you are cooking a large amount of beef, then brown the pieces a few at a time.

Once all the beef pieces are browned return them all to the pan and put in the stock enriched with vegetables to almost cover the beef. Drain the mushrooms reserving the juice and add them to the beef. Stir in. Add enough of the mushroom juice to just cover the beef, saving the rest in case it will be needed later to moisten the stew. Note that quite often there is a bit of grit in dried mushrooms, so when using the juice let any sediment settle to the bottom of it, and then pour the good carefully from the top leaving the last bit in the container.

Bring the stew to a simmer and cook very slowly for at least four hours. I have to admit that here is where I have a secret weapon, the wood burning oven featured above. I get this up to 180 degrees centigrade, put my stew in and let it bubble for a while and then I don’t add any more fuel at all. I let the stew cook all night in the slowly cooling oven. The result is a richness to the stew and a tenderness to the meat that is just superb. So do do try to replicate this method, and don’t be afraid of cooking your stew over a long period of time. Modern ovens are well insulated, so bring your stew to a simmer on the hob, put it in the oven at the above temperature for 40 minutes, then turn off the heat and go to bed. Try not to eat the stew for breakfast.

The next day once the stew is cool enough, put it in the fridge until needed. It will be fine for 2-3 days.

I like to serve stews with a Gremolata. Which is simply finely chopped parsley, garlic and finely grated lemon rind. Put a bowl of it on the table for your guests to season their stew with.