Beery Beef

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I'm in a cooking mood tonight and have just under a pound of stewing beef and some left over veggies to hand so this is what I'm going to .

Ingredients

400g stewing beef, cubed
2 tbsp flour, salt and black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
large onion, sliced
half large courgette, sliced
half large green pepper, sliced
half dozen rather battered mushrooms, broken
2 smallish and past their best carrots, sliced
garlic
seasonings
red wine
1 can dark beer

Cast iron casserole pan
Oven preheated to about 150 degrees

• Mix the flour and salt and pepper then dredge over the meat, making sure all the bits are covered. While you're doing this the olive oil can be heating in the pan on top of the cooker.


• Smash up a couple of garlic cloves and drop the bits into the oil.


• Fry the bits of beef in the garlicky oil. Ideally you should do it a few at a time to ensure that they are properly browned but *sigh* life's too short. Bang the beef in there and shift it around. It'll taste about the same.


• Add the vegetables and mix well.


• When good and hot slop in whatever wine you have to hand [I buy a cheap box of the stuff and squirt it into just about anything that could do with a lift]. Stir it around and you'll see that the wine picks up the flour and begins to thicken into a sauce. If you have no wine, skip this step and go straight to the beer!


• Add the beer - either it'll do what the wine did and start to thicken, or dilute the sauce a bit. In either case you need enough liquid to completely cover the meat and veg.
  
• Add more seasoning if necessary.


• Lid the pan, or cover it with foil if you are lidless, and put in the oven. If your oven is reliable it should take one and a half hours to cook on a low heat. If it's like mine be sure to check every 20-30 minutes to make sure it hasn't cooked dry.


• If there's any left - drink the rest of the beer.

While the beef is cooking you can make a simple but rather nice accompaniment by taking large potatoes, cutting each into eight wedges lengthways, rolling them in olive oil then dusting them with more highly seasoned flour - salt and smoked paprika tastes really good. They can cook on the shelf above the casserole for the last half hour or so while you put your feet up and watch - er - whatever. Or file your nails or, in my case, write fic.

Enjoy.