Slow cooked Cumberland beef stew with donkey carrots

When I first set out to make this meal, it was supposed to be a crispy topped Cumberland pie.  However, I ran out of puff part way through it - and discovered how yummy just the beef part of the recipe could be on its own.

As with a lot of my recipes these days, this one has taken bits from several different recipes.  However, the original inspiration came from the BBC Good Food website and their Crispy topped Cumberland pie.

The original version was made with feather blade beef, however I opted to use our favourite shin of beef because a) I was going to be slow-cooking it and b) the flavour of beef shin is amazing.  However, this plan back-fired on me this time around - as you'll discover later.

I liked the idea of the sliced potatoes on top, along with the baked to crispiness cheese coating.  Cheddar always goes so well with beef, they are a real comfort food pairing.  I was a bit nervous about the sliced potatoes, however, as I've not had a lot of luck with them in the past.  They either wind up still hard (not long enough in the oven) or turn black and unappetising looking (wrong type of potato, left too long before baking).  You see, I know what I did wrong in the past - so I was determined not to commit any of these crimes this time around.  Hubby always greets the idea of sliced potato on top of a savoury dish with great scepticism, so I not only had my own failures to beat, I had his expectations to exceed too.

Swimming around happily

When it got closer to the time when I would make the transfer from the slow cooker to the oven, I think I had got myself so wound up over the potatoes failing (again), that I just opted for the easier route and didn't bother.

The marriage of beef and cheese is what makes a "Cumberland" something, Cumberland.  So, rather than miss the whole point of the recipe, I remembered seeing Jamie Oliver adding some grated cheese to a beef casserole - and did the same.  It was very definitely counter-intuitive to be grating cheddar into a beef casserole, but for all that it didn't taste obviously of cheddar cheese, it very definitely made a difference in both flavour and texture.

I must pause here and comment on the carrots.  You see, carrots have such a fundamental part to play in British cooking.  They appear on so many plates over the course of a lifetime's meals, yet rarely do you see anyone doing anything exciting with them (apart from the occasional carrot cake and maybe a carrot & coriander soup).  Now, I'm not saying that adding them to this stew was exciting, but if we could just have a little bit of appreciation here for the 'umble carrot in all its many forms, I think it would be appropriate.  The carrots used in this stew were the big fat donkey carrots.  None of your thin, springtime carrots, or your fancy Chantenay carrots.  Oh no.  What you need are big, fat, coarse carrots that are going to stand being cooked for a long time and have loads of sweetness to impart.

I love the name "donkey carrots" and have been wracking my brains to try and remember where I first heard the term.  It was either care of Raymond Blanc on his "Kitchen Secrets" programme - he is so funny in this programme! - or with Michael Caines during his carrot episode of the Great British Food Revival.  Either way, "donkey carrot" just suits this great big honking lump of carrotiness perfectly - and "donkey carrots" they shall be, for me, in future.  (I can remember when I owned horses and a donkey, buying a 25kg bag of just these type of carrots, for their feed!  More than one of them went home with me and wound up on my plate!).

Now, what was the end result like, I hear you ask?  Well, I loved it, son & heir loved it but hubby - oddly - couldn't take the texture of the beef shin.

See what I mean by connective tissue?  Can't trim it all out!

I'm really not sure what the difference was, as we've had and eaten beef shin on many other occasions and he hasn't experienced the same problem, plus I didn't notice any difference in the meat as I was trimming it up.  Trimming up beef shin is always a labour of love, so I very definitely went over it with a fine toothcomb for yukky fat and globby bits.  Shin of beef contains a lot of connective tissue, which during the course of slow cooking melts into the gravy and gives it a very rich, almost glutinous texture.  It makes me wonder if the addition of the cheese to the gravy didn't just push the texture over the edge of palatable for hubby, as he really is so terribly sensitive to soft textures in food.

For me, the cheese made the gravy incredibly savoury, rich and unctuous along with giving it a certain indefinable and very pleasant something.  I really liked the carrot and the combination of onions and celery had just melted away into the gravy.  I used my favourite Knorr Rich Beef Stock Pot to provide a good amount of additional "oomph!" to the gravy base - they really are indispensable to me, now.

That oddly coloured carrot on the right, is a purple carrot!

So all in all, I'd very definitely do this recipe again - but I think I'd choose something like Brisket of beef, or perhaps Silverside (depending on the price!), both of which have far less connective tissue and thus would make it palatable for hubby.  After all, there's no point spending all that time trimming, cooking and serving if he can't eat it!

SLOW COOKED CUMBERLAND STEW WITH DONKEY CARROTS   (feeds 4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp rapeseed oil
6-700g beef brisket (or braising cut of your choice)
2 big donkey carrots, peeled and chopped into chunky pieces
2 onions, chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Knorr Really Beefy Stock Pot (or a beef stock cube)
1 tsp Bovril
half a tsp of freshly ground black pepper
500ml hot water
1 tbsp softened butter
2 tbsp plain flour
a large handful of grated mature cheddar cheese.

Method :

1.  Heat the oil in a frying pan until really quite hot.  Add the beef - you may need to do this bit in stages, so as not to overcrowd the pan - and sear until you have a good dark golden brown colour on at least two sides.  Decant into the slow cooker with a slotted spoon and turn it to low, making sure to replace the lid.

2.  Add the carrots to the slow cooker and replace the lid.

3.  Add the onion to the frying pan (you may need a touch more oil) and cook gently for 5-6 minutes until softened, transparent and just beginning to take on colour.

4.  Add the celery and continue to cook for another 2-3 minutes.

5.  Add the bay leaves, tomato puree, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, stock pot (or stock cube, if using), Bovril, pepper and water and stir gently to combine as it heats through.

6.  In a small dish, mix the butter and flour together.  Remove the frying pan from the heat and add a teaspoonful of the flour mixture to the gravy.  Stir well to ensure it mixes in without forming lumps.  Continue until you have the consistency you prefer - less flour mix for thinner, more flour mix for thicker.

7.  Return the pan to the heat and stir until properly thickened.

8.  Decant into the slow cooker.  Replace the lid and leave to cook for the next 8-10 hours.

9.  Just prior to serving, remove the lid and using the slotted spoon, move the meat to one side of the slow cooker.

10.  Add the grated cheddar to the non-meat side and stir it gently into the gravy.  Once melted, stir the meat back in to the cheesy gravy.

Serve.

Printable version
 

Oriental Beef with Butternut Squash and Special Fried Rice

You remember how keen I was on the shin of beef dishes I've made just recently?  Or perhaps how excited I was about the Pot Roasted Brisket?  Well, this one surpasses all of those.  Truly!

I kept a little secret from the boys about this dish, which was that it originated from the Weight Watchers Oriental Express recipe book!  Anything that has "healthy" or "low fat" in its title always engenders much suspicion in a chap's breast, it seems.  So, I figured it was better that they didn't know, right up until such time as I could commit the big "reveal", or admit it was another failure.  Whichever was appropriate.  In fact, as I didn't have any low fat cooking spray, I substituted olive oil where that was required but used it sparingly.  I also tweaked the quantities of orange juice to water, winding up with a little more of the juice than the water, largely because two oranges came to 150ml, once juiced, and I wasn't prepared to find a home for the extra half - so used it.

I had scheduled this dish for a Sunday evening when, normally, we'd have some sort of Sunday roast.  I reckoned it wouldn't hurt us to not have a traditional Sunday roast - and as it used almost as much beef brisket as had the previous Sunday's meal, it was almost a Sunday roast - just prepared differently.  In truth, I think I was justifying it to myself as I really don't suppose the boys care whether we have a Sunday roast or not - so long as something yummy turns up for dinner each day, I doubt they consider it much further than that.

I had liked the sound of the recipe at the first read-through, plus it also had the benefit of my having just about everything in the fridge or spice cupboard already, barring the meat and the butternut squash.  This made the purchase of these two more expensive ingredients rather more affordable.

The 800g of brisket was a lovely piece of meat.  It took just a little trimming on one side to remove some short runs of gristle, plus a bit of a trim of the fat on the other side.  I didn't remove all the fat, as I knew it was going to be cooking for some two and a half hours and fat doesn't usually survive that!  Dustbins 1 and 2 were in attendance, of course, and soon took care of any offcuts.

Where the rice was concerned, on the previous day we'd been shopping - doing a top-up shop for the weekend and the beginning of the following week.  I always like to have a cruise (don't forget, I use a disability buggy) down the world foods aisle where, to my surprise, I found a bottle of authentic oyster sauce.  At £2-odd, it was a little pricey when I didn't have anything in mind for it - but too good to leave there, so I bought it.  Only as I was assembling the ingredients for the special fried rice, did I remember the oyster sauce.  Using authentic soy (Yellow Plum brand), authentic fish sauce (Squid brand) and the authentic oyster sauce, put the tin lid on our attempts to make an authentic-tasting special fried rice.  I thoroughly recommend you put together some authentic ingredients like these, when you have a go at the rice recipe - they make all the difference.

ORIENTAL BEEF WITH BUTTERNUT SQUASH  (feeds 3-4)


Ingredients :

800g lean beef brisket, visible fat trimmed & sliced
olive oil
2 onions, sliced
1 star anise
1 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
5cm (2") fresh root ginger, grated
150ml fresh orange juice
250ml water
4 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 red chilli, de-seeded if you prefer, and chopped
400g butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and chopped into 1cm pieces
salt & pepper

Method :

1.  Heat a large lidded saucepan or casserole dish - one which will go in the oven.  Pre-heat oven to 190deg C.


2.  Add a little olive oil and half the beef strips.  Sear until browned all over, then remove and sear the remaining half and remove.

3.  Add the onions to the pan with a little more olive oil if necessary.  Fry over a medium heat for 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. It doesn't matter of some onions take on some colour, but you're aiming for them all to be softened.

4.  Add the star anise, 5 spice powder, ginger and chilli and stir fry for a minute.


5.  Pour in the water, orange juice and soy sauce.  Stir and ensure that you have de-glazed the pan, getting up all the lovely baked on flavour and stirring it in.  Re-introduce the beef and stir to combine.

6.  Bring to the boil, cover and then place in the oven for 2 hours.

7.  Remove from the oven, stir and add the squash, stirring to combine.  Replace into the oven for 30 minutes or until the squash is tender.  You probably won't need to cover the pan at this stage.

8.  If the sauce remains too watery, add a little cornflour and stir to combine until the favoured consistency has been reached.

Serve with Special Fried Rice :


SPECIAL FRIED RICE (feeds 3-4)

Ingredients :



a knob of butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs
a bunch of spring onions, trimmed and chopped finely
a small piece of ginger, shredded finely
2 mushrooms, chopped finely
a small handful of frozen peas
a small handful of frozen sweetcorn
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsp fish sauce
2-300g long grain rice, cooked and allowed to cool.

Method :



1.  Heat the knob of butter and olive oil in a deep frying pan or wok.  Add the beaten egg one by one and cook to form an omelette.  Place both omelettes somewhere to keep warm.


2.  In the remaining butter/olive oil mixture, stir-fry the onion, mushroom and ginger for around 2-3 minutes or until the onions are appearing softened.


3.  Add the peas and sweetcorn and continue to cook until they are tender.


4.  Add the soy, oyster & fish sauces and stir through on a low heat.


5.  Add the cooked rice and stir through gently on a medium heat or until the rice is heated through.  Add the shredded egg omelettes - and serve.


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A nice bit of Brisket!

Roast beef on a Sunday.

Apart from the rib of beef that I roasted for Christmas dinner, I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a piece of beef on an “ordinary” Sunday.

However, since I discovered my local butcher, beef has appeared on our menu-planning list as a regular event – but until this last weekend, not as a roasting joint.

It all began when I stopped roasting chickens and started pot roasting (or poaching) them instead.  I had such marvellous results that I’ve sworn never to roast a chicken again.

Since then, I’ve also done a pot roast with a gammon joint, again with a great deal of success.

I was reading through some of the food blogs that I follow, when up popped an entry regarding a pot roasted brisket.  Mmmmn, that sounded good.  However, I didn’t take it any further (other than mentally marking it, if ever a piece of brisket came my way) and life continued.  Right up until I saw, in the butcher’s window, a notice saying “Special Offer : 1kg rolled brisket : £3-something”.  Well, it didn’t exactly say “£3-something”, it’s just that I can’t exactly remember how much it was, other than the £3 bit.

Two things struck me about this.  Firstly, that the price was only around 50p more expensive than my usual target for the meat for a Sunday meal.  Secondly, that 1kg of brisket is one heck of a lot of meat, even allowing for shrinkage in the cooking.

It’s amazing how I find that I can remember a recipe, but I can’t remember the name of my next door neighbour (who shall be forever known as “Flossy next door”).  Immediately, I remembered the pot roasted brisket recipe, which sounded not only a great way to cook the beef, but about the only way of ensuring as little shrinkage as possible.

When Sunday dawned, I will admit to being a little bit nervous about cooking this gorgeous great hunk of beef, as it was just too good to ruin.

I started off by searing the outside of the beef on all sides – quite apart from the gorgeous smell it gives off, I do think that it adds flavour and colour which just pot roasting (which is little more than poaching) would provide alone.

Then, I added water and a stock cube and the following : two carrots, an onion and two sticks of celery – all quartered.  Plus two cloves of garlic, a big handful of fresh parsley and a bay leaf.

I then brought the liquid up to the boil, and put the whole lot in the oven for 2 hours, after which I turned the beef and put it back in the oven for another hour.

Not only was the beef the kind of texture that you could cut with a spoon, but also it tasted utterly divine.  I served it with roasted potatoes, parsnips and cauliflower with green beans – but the unexpected advantage is the stock.  If you try this recipe out, please please make your gravy from the stock.  You’ll probably never have had gravy like it before.  I’ve two pots of it in the freezer, just waiting for the next piece of brisket.

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What's for dinner this week?

Yesterday was hubby's birthday and I made him a birthday curry.  Rather belatedly, as we were tucking into it, I remembered that I should have taken a photograph for the blog.  Hey ho, it'll have to wait until the next time.  It was a shame, as that curry really was rather spectacular (chicken, tomato, red lentil - it came up not unlike a Dansak).  I did some mushroom rice to go with it, which was extremely yummy too.

I am especially proud of last night's curry, as it hadn't been adapted from anyone's recipe - it was all my own work.  Mind you, I have had a little bit of coaching from the book "The Curry Secret", which the lovely Ian from Appliances Online sent to me.  (You can find Appliances Online on Twitter, too, so if you're thinking about getting a new appliance, why not have a word with Yossi).  Getting back to "The Curry Secret" by Kris Dillon, it is all about making curries like your local curry house does.  The "curry secret" as referred to, is in the making of a basic curry sauce which all the recipes are then adapted from by the introduction of various additional spices.  I will admit that I've not made the curry sauce yet, but the basic recipe for last night's curry was very close to Kris Dillon's (purely by accident) which I found quite interesting that I'd arrived there by trial and error, over the months.

So, that aside, what are we having for dinner for the rest of this week?

Hope mine looks as nice!

Well, tonight will be my first attempt at making a Mulligatawny Soup.  It is utilising the other half of the pot roasted chicken from Sunday, so will be a chicken version rather than the more traditional beef.  Mulligatawny is one of the original "fusion" foods, I think, but I'll have to try hard to make sure it doesn't turn into a curried stew!


Wednesday will be good old pie, mash & veg.  I've bought a steak & kidney pie, as a little break from the in-depth culinary creating!

Picture c/o BBC Good Food

Thursday is Creamy Chicken & Penne pasta.  We had this during the busy period after Christmas when I didn't have time to post about it, but it really is a cracker.  The recipe is so easy to do - and the results are lovely.  Just right for a dinner following on from a busy day at work.

Friday's meal will be something of an adventure, as I'm venturing into Ham Hock land.  I have a lovely-sounding recipe for Ham Hock with beans & vegetables, which we'll be eating with a lovely crusty farmhouse loaf.  I'm hoping it will turn out to be something akin to peasant food!

Saturday is another (albeit rather smaller) venture into the unknown, as I'm making home-made coleslaw to go with some barbecue sausages in pitta pockets.  Now, in years gone by, I used to make my own coleslaw which was very well received.  However, with these two chaps I'm now catering for, raw cabbage is not so well received.   The coleslaw recipe contains interesting things like apple and sultanas, which should go very nicely with lovely juicy sausages in a barbecue glaze - so keep your fingers firmly crossed!

Sunday and I'm pushing the boundaries of pot-roasting.  Instead of the usual chicken, this week I'm going for a piece of beef Brisket.

In view of the recent t.v. programme "Great British Food Revival" and my love of the humble cauliflower, I'll be serving the brisket with some spiced roasted cauliflower along with the more usual roasties.  The cauliflower is another "keep your fingers crossed for me" job and I'll be using the other half of it in a curry which will feature on the menu list for next week.  Curried cauliflower always goes down well.

Which brings us to Monday.  After all that exciting cooking over the weekend, I'm taking a breather with something everybody knows and loves - Pasta Bolognese with garlic bread.

So, looking back across the week, it seems as though we're having four different types of bread product, two different types of pasta product and seven different preparations of meat and two different preparations of potato!  You can't say I don't try to make the menu varied.

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