Tropical Beef Stew

Has it really been a week since I blogged here? Where does the time go? My sincerest apologies. I shall try my best not to leave you all alone for so long again.

Just when we thought it was getting all summery again, the southerly has come back through, so the fire is going and the wintry food keeps rolling out of our kitchen.

This one comes from the Recipe Book of the Weird and Wonderful - that's not a real recipe book, mind you, but an excuse for me to make up strange combinations and cook them just because I can.

This particular meal came about because we happened to have a whole fresh pineapple in the house. We'd sliced up about half of it and eaten it off a platter during the day, but as anyone who's ever kept pineapple will know, you really should eat it the day you slice it open or it goes bad.

I really don't like it when things go bad.

So, no matter that I had taken stewing steak out of the freezer to cook for dinner that night. The pineapple was going in with it too, somehow.

Thus was born the Tropical Beef Stew. Think of it as a Summer-Winter fusion if you must, as Spring in Wellington so often is.

Tropical Beef Stew
(Serves 4)Ingredients:
400g Stewing Steak, cubed and seasoned with freshly ground pepper and salt
1 Large Lemon
1/2 Fresh Pineapple, cubed, or 1 200g Can of Pineapple Pieces
Whole Nutmeg for grating
2C Hot Beef Stock
Grate the zest of the lemon and a few gratings of nutmeg over the beef and toss well. Batch fry the meat, draining the cooking liquid into a large pot as you go.
Transfer the cooked meat into this pot. Heat the pan again and add the pineapple, squeezing over the juice of the lemon. Heat briefly, tossing to deglaze the pan, then add to the pot along with the beef stock.

Bring to a rapid boil for 20 minutes, then reduce to a simmer for 1 1/2hrs.
Dish over rice boiled in beef stock, with sour cream and fresh steamed veges.

(The odd shape on the left in this photo is a dumpling. I had some dough that I had frozen, but here's my advice: dumpling dough doesn't unfreeze and cook very well. Don't bother, or, if you know a trick that makes them not come out like shrivelled little piles of rubber, leave me a comment so I know better for next time.)

I'll be honest: This dish got a mixed reception. I liked it, but not everyone at the table thought it was something I should add to our regular menu. But if you like beef and pineapple, it's a pretty good combination.

Burgundy Beef Stew (Mine, I tell you)

There's an irony here, and it's not just the cast-iron pan (although in some ways, it is).

Inspired by all the Slow Cooker recipes I've posted here at Freshly Ground, my Mum bought me the Slow Cooker recipe book pictured above. Thanks, Mum.

She also asked me to try a few recipes from it and post them here, so that was, by all means, my intention.

The trouble was that on the day Aunty L came to visit and I was going to do just as Mum had asked, we ran out of hours in the day, and therein lies the irony.

I sort of had to adapt the Slow-cooked Burgundy Beef Stew with Horseradish Dumplings - which I had planned to make - into something that I didn't need to, well, Slow-cook. Also, I just made normal dumplings. Not a big horseradish fan.

So, Mum, here's what might be a version of that recipe, but done in the oven, the old-fashioned way. Anyway, I had to change the recipe somewhat so as not to be in some sort of copyright breach, so I'm going to call this...

Dan's Burgundy Beef Stew

(Serves 6)

Ingredients

750g Stewing Steak, cubed
1t dried thyme or 1T fresh thyme
Whole nutmeg, for grating
1 Onion, sliced
3-4 Cloves Garlic, chopped
2T Flour or Potato Flour
300ml Red Wine
300ml Beef Stock
1T Tomato Puree
2 Bay Leaves
3 Carrots, peeled and sliced
1 Leek, trimmed and sliced into rings
100g Mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
Oil for frying
Freshly Ground Pepper and Salt

Season the meat with salt and pepper and a splash of wine. Heat the oil in a pan, then brown the meat in batches. While frying, add thyme and a few grates of nutmeg. Add the onion, stir in and fry for a few minutes. Add the garlic and flour, then mix in the wine and stock.
Add the tomato puree, bay leaves and salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then transfer to an oven dish.
Mix in the mushrooms and leeks, make sure there is enough liquid in the dish to almost cover the stew (add more hot water if necessary), and place in the oven at 180c for 2 hours.

Prepare your dumplings when the stew goes in the oven, and add to the oven dish for the last 20 minutes of cooking.Dish up with rice (boiled in beef stock, of course) and a nice glass of red wine.

The slow-cooker version is to shift the meat from the pan to the slow-cooker on low for 7 hours, then adding the leeks and mushrooms, turning the slow-cooker up to high, and then 45 minutes later adding the dumplings for a further 45 minutes. Certainly not something you can start into at 3pm, but here's the quick version. And as you can see, it turned out pretty well.

Bohemian Goulash

Here at the bottom of the South Pacific the days are getting longer and the nights are feeling warmer. But I'm not fooled: it's still winter.

Nonetheless, my opportunities this winter for posting lovely hearty stews are running short, so here's one of my all-time favourites: Goulash.

Whether your Goulash is simply hearty or truly fiery all comes down to how much spice you add, so if you like a good hit of tongue-burning heat, just double the quantities of paprika and carraway.

Otherwise, this meal follows the template of most of my stew dishes: Sealing the flavours into the meat in a hot pan, deglazing the cooking pan with wine and stock, and cooking for a couple of hours, adding dumplings at the end. What better way to wrap up a Sunday night?

Bohemian Goulash
(Serves 4)

Ingredients:
400g stewing steak, cubed
1 large onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
2t carraway seeds
2t dried thyme or 1T fresh thyme leaves
2T paprika
2t flour (or potato flour to make this recipe Gluten Free)
2 carrots, sliced
3 small potatoes, diced
1 kumera, diced
1/2C red wine
1 1/2C beef stock
1/4C sour cream

Dumplings

Heat some olive oil in a pan, fry the onion and garlic until soft, then add the meat and brown quickly. Add herbs, spices, flour, and freshly ground pepper and salt. Sear thoroughly without burning.
Place the carrots, potatoes and kumera into an oven dish and scoop the browned meat and onions into it. Mix well.
Return the pan to a moderate heat, then add the red wine, scraping the bottom of the pan to bring up all the cooking flavour. Add the stock, not too quickly, ensuring the reduction doesn't cool too far. Allow to thicken slightly.

Pour the reduction over the meat and veges in the pan, top up with a little water if required to stop the meat from drying out.

Cover and place into a preheated oven at 200C, and cook for 1 1/2 hours. Then add your dumplings, and cook for a further 20-30 minutes.
When the stew is done, dish up the dumplings, then mix the sour cream through before serving. If, like me, you sometimes forget to do this, it's also fine to just spoon it up on top of the stew.

Great with mashed potato and fresh steamed greens, plus a nice big glass of bold red wine.

Steak Stew

This is from a recipe I heard on the radio a few weeks back and decided that I had to try.

Since I'm a big fan of steak, and I'm a big fan of stew, the idea of Steak Stew just seemed like a match made in heaven.

Officially this was called Slow-Cooked Steak in Red Wine with Gremolata Dumplings, but Steak Stew was easier to remember.

To quote this particular rendition of the European classic's progenitor, Meillier Ouvrier chef Mark Gregory,

"In these recessionary times, it’s good to remind ourselves that simple food, slowly cooked is cost-effective, comforting and absolutely delicious. Our grandmothers used dumplings to pad out the more expensive ingredients like meat, and it’s a great house-keeping tip which is more relevant than ever right now!"

Never was a truer word spoken. If you're not making the most of cheaper cuts of meat cooked long and slow in the oven, then now is the time to get into it. And this one is actually pretty darned easy.

Just imagine: You've had a "stew" ticking away in the oven for a couple of hours, and when you come to dish it up, it's not stew but steak that slaps down on the plate, tender and melting and drowning in delicious red wine gravy.

With dumplings, of course.

I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter, only reducing the quantities by half. I have copied most of the recipe direct from the Radio NZ website, indented for clarity.

Beef steak
4 x 300 - 400g beef blade or chuck steaks
plain flour to dust steaks
¼ cup olive oil – or use other if not available
2 medium onions – finely chopped
3 cloves garlic – finely chopped
300ml red wine
1 cup tinned chopped tomatoes
½ cup chicken stock
pinch dried chilli
3 sprigs rosemary – from the garden if you have it
6 pieces anchovy - optional

"First choose a casserole dish large enough to hold the steaks.

Heat a frying pan, add three tablespoons of olive oil then sweat the onions and garlic for 5 minutes until soft and sweet. Scrape all into the casserole saucepan."

"Re-heat frying pan, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, lightly dust steaks with flour then pan fry until golden – you may have to do this in batches depending upon size of fry pan. Place the coloured steaks on top of the onions."

"Add red wine to the frying pan and reduce down for several minutes until it’s nearly all evaporated, add the tomatoes, stock and chili, rosemary and anchovies if using. Stir well before scraping everything over the steaks. Cover with a lid and place in oven at 325F/160°C for one-and-a-half hours."

Don't forget the dumplings:

Gremolata dumplings
2 cups plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic – crushed
1 lemon, zested
½ cup parsley - chopped
1 cup grated butter – place in freezer for 1 hour first before grating
¾+ cup milk

"After 1 hour make the gremolata dumplings – sift flour into a large mixing bowl, gently mix in all other ingredients except milk. Now mix in sufficient milk to make a moist dough (similar to scones).

With wet hands, roll dumpling dough into golf ball-sized pieces and place on floured bench top. Remove steaks from oven, take off the lid and place gremolata dumplings evenly around the surface, be sure to leave one inch between each – if there’s too much dumpling mix do not use the extra.

Recover steaks with the lid and place back into the oven a further 20 minutes to cook the dumplings."

This was pretty yummy, but I think they should've cooked for even longer to really get down to that melt-in-your-mouth stage. The Gremolata Dumplings were different, and a curious change from my usual herbed dumplings, but I think we'll stick with the original for a while yet.

So there you have it, a bit of a recipe review. I just keep moving into new, exciting fields of endeavour, don't I?

Olive(r) Stew

I've made noises here about celebrity chefs before, and a little while ago I posted a meal I cooked out of a Gordon Ramsay Cookbook that I picked up at the Food Show.

Now, the guys at Kamikaze Cookery (Link junkies: Language may offend. You've been warned) have taken it upon themselves to expose the glaring discrepancies between what most people are capable of cooking compared with what the Ramsays and Olivers of the world think we can manage, so I won't try to outdo them on that count.

Instead, I thought it worthwhile documenting my own attempt to pull off a recipe for Peposo - famous hunter's peppery beef stew - out of Jamie Oliver's book, Jamie's Italy. I like to think of myself as a slightly more accomplished home gourmandiser than the average kiwi bloke, so I was not daunted by the challenge.

Perhaps I should've been.

Admittedly I was trying to cook about 600g of beef rather than the 2.5kg in the recipe (I mean, who really cooks 2.5kg of stewing steak at a time? There are only 2 1/2 of us, after all!), and I was using normal stewing steak rather than beef shin on the bone, but you work with what you've got, right? I made the effort to use real french red wine, at least. And anyway, the first thing you do according to the recipe is take the meat off the bone, so why not just use deboned meat to start with?
Simple enough. Meat, onions, rosemary, garlic, bay leaves, salt and pepper.
Layer it all up in an oven dish and cover in wine, topping with water to cover the meat if necessary. Then bring to a boil and place in the oven at 150c for 6 hours. Yes, I did all this. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?
Then at the bottom of the recipe (not at the top, not at the "when you're layering the dish" part) it says to skim off the fat and remove the bone. Aah. I see. So the bone was meant to go in? That bone I don't have? Right. Well, I didn't. Not only that but my dish didn't have any fat to skim off. It had virtually no moisture at all. Apparently it should have.
Yes, this was quite intensely flavoured as Jamie promised, and the meat was falling apart, if a little over-dry. I wonder if I had a small army to feed rather than my modest family, and I had cooked this in the five-fold quantity suggested by JO if this might have come out better. I can only guess so.

I dished it up on buttered slabs of fresh bread (also Jamie's recipe from his first book - I tried it once and have made it that way ever since), and we agreed that it was good that we had some nice bread for dinner.

So it's worrying that if even I, with my extraordinary powers of making stuff up on the fly and trusting my instincts to salvage the various disasters that arise from my untutored approach to cooking, can be derailed by a Jamie Oliver recipe that seems so straightforward, then how much paper is being wasted in this world in the printing of celebrity chef recipe books that people will simply never use? Or if they do, they'll be disappointed, and thus the book will sit on the shelf forever gathering dust?

I make an effort to make something from one of my many cookbooks every month or so, trying to learn new things and bring a dash of variety to our meals. But if the people who sell the most cookbooks on the planet - I'm looking at you, Jamie, Gordon and Nigella - can't come to terms with what average folk are really looking for in a recipe and capable of achieving in the kitchen, then I worry that even more innocent trees will die as a result.

Please, celebrity chefs. Take a moment to consider the trees. Then pull your heads our of your @rses and give us recipes that we can cook, damn it.

Pepper Steak Stew

Every day as I drive to work, the streetlights seem to be turning off closer and closer to home. So, either I'm running later every day, or the mornings are getting lighter earlier, which means that Spring's coming. But don't let it fool you, Winter is still here, and its not going without a fight. What that means for us, apart from the chopping and shifting of firewood and the mud on the carpet which that generates, is that its still very much stew season. I love stews. What I love even more about them now is getting all the ingredients ready the night before and coming home to the smell of cooking stew after work the following evening. Ah, Slow Cooker, how you've changed our lives.

Pepper Steak Stew (Slow Cooker Recipe)

Serves 4

Heat about 2t of olive oil in a pan. When it's quite hot, add the following to the pan:
1 t Peppercorns
1 t Carraway Seeds
2 Bay Leaves
6 Fresh Sage Leaves
3-6 Whole Cloves
1 T Fresh Rosemary Leaves
Freshly Ground Salt

Fry lightly, filling the kitchen with all those lovely smells. This is really to open up all the flavours of the herbs and spices and release thier fragrances into the meat.
In a mixing bowl, blend 60ml of red wine with 60ml of dry white wine, 4 T Olive Oil, 2 T Honey and 1 T of paprika. When the spices have been frying for about 3-4 minutes (keep to a moderate heat, and be sure not to let it burn), add this to the wine and allow to steep for 10 minutes or so.

Roughly chop an onion and pop it in the pan on a low heat to absorb that flavoured oil. When the onion has just started to soften, place it in the bottom of the crockpot.

Meanwhile, cube a 600g piece of Skirt Steak or similar. Brush up a kumera and a couple of carrots. Leave the skins on these as you want them to hold together and release that lovely colour as they cook. Chop into roughly 2cm cubes and mix up with the onion in the crockpot. Open a tin of whole peeled tomatoes and mix these through the onions, mashing up the tomato as you do. Place 1/3 C of concentrated Chicken Stock or Beef Stock in the crockpot.

Note: To make Concentrated Chicken Stock, just put a normal pot of stock on the stove to simmer and then forget about it over a few wines and a movie. Then when you're ready to go to bed and you start wondering what that bubbling, tinkling noise is coming from the kitchen, you're most of the way there.

Place the meat in the wine marinade and mix through thoroughly. Leave in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, preferably overnight.

To cook, mix everything together in the crockpot and turn on, either on low for about 8 hours, or on High for 2 hours then down to low for a further 4 hours.

Mix up a bowl of Dumplings. Sift 1.25C of Flour, 1t Baking Powder, a pinch of salt and the other half of the Oxo Cube into a bowl. Add a shake of dried mixed herbs and 50g of butter, cubed. If you have a pastry blender, this is an easy way to crumble up the ingredients. If not, just rub it through your fingers until it feels like a light crumble. Then add milk or water a little at a time until the dough forms into a sticky mass. Roll into spoonfuls and place on top of the stew for the last 2 hours.

Creamy Dhukka Beef Stew

Its not a Slow Cooker Stew this time. I've not been 100% happy with my stew results in the Slow Cooker, although I've been stoked with Lamb Knuckles and Chicken. Today we had a bit of tenderised beef steak, and while this in not generally considered ideal for stewing, I was listening to the radio a couple of weeks back and listened in utter astonishment as Jeremy Jones provided a recipe for Beef Stroganoff made with fillet steak. That's just crazy! I thought. But in all fairness, if you have no time and plenty of money it sounds reasonable enough, and I haven't actually tried it myself. And since we had a frying steak on a stewy day (in more than one sense of the word) I decided I'd have a go at making a stew that might not need several hours cooking. Prep and cooking time was under 2 hours, and it probably could've been shorter.

You can find dhukka in middle eastern or Mediterranean groceries, or follow the link for a recipe that I haven't tried.If you're lucky enough to live in Wellington, Christchurch or Nelson, the Mediterranean Food Warehouse usually stocks a nice blend, along with lots of other goodies (not a sponsored plug!).

Creamy Dhukka Beef Stew

Finely chop half a head of garlic, 1 onion and 2 carrots. Heat some oil in a medium sized pot and soften these . Add 1/2t of blended curry powder to the veges and toss. When the curry has mixed through the veges, add about 3T of Cider Vinegar and reduce to a simmer for about 5 minutes.

Chop 600g of tenderised steak into chunks and season in a bowl with freshly ground salt and pepper, olive oil and a liberal coating of dhukka. Stand aside. Remove the onion mixture from the pot and heat a bit more oil. When the oil is hot, brown off the meat in a couple of batches. When you've finished the meat, heat the pot again and deglaze with a mixture of about 1/8 Cup of balsamic vinegar and 1T of honey. Reduce the glaze by half, then return the meat to the pot. Toss well in the glaze, then return the onions to the pot. Mix well. Add a can of chopped tomatoes, bring to a gentle bubble and reduce to a gentle simmer for 1 to 1&1/2 hours. In the last half hour add some veges to the stew. Over a pot of boiling water, steam a few florets of brocolli and cauliflower. I did ours over a pot of kumera and lovely new potatoes bought fresh from the market on Saturday morning, boiled up with a sprig of mint out of the garden and some peeled lemon rind (thanks, lemon tree!). When the broco and cauli are hot, pop them in the stew and mix through. Then add 1/4 Cup of cream and stir through thoroughly. Increase the heat to reduce the stew a bit, allowing about 5 mins for the cream to thicken, and dish with the potatoes and kumera. Lovely stuff.

Winter is here

Oh yes. Jack Frost has been about, and the wind is now blowing cold from the north as well as the south.

After a week that has ranged from the mildly annoying to the downright depressing, it's finally the weekend again. We missed our trip to the market last week due to being in the South Island, but we braved the cold and the wind to get down there this morning. The sun came out and it was a clear crisp day at the riverbank with bargains to be found. We spent about $30, and the vege crisper, fruitbowl, and the cupboard where the onions, potatoes and kumaras live are all overflowing.

A quick word about garlic. Without any suggestion of xenophobia, I really have to recommend that you (assuming you're in NZ - if not, replace "NZ" with "local" just to make the same points) buy NZ garlic if you can find it. Most of what we get in the stores is grown overseas, particularly in China, and you'll see it in those jammed plastic mesh bags in the supermarket for bargain prices. NZ garlic is more expensive than the mass imported stuff you can get, but it has a much shorter drive to the market. Besides the reduced carbon footprint of buying local produce and the way that local stuff tends to taste better, we have stringent quality controls in place in NZ to regulate the quality of the soil that our food is grown in. But my main issue with the chinese garlic we have here is that by the time is gets to us, most of it is going green in the middle, and these bits have to be cut out, and the cloves are usually a bit rubbery. For the sake of knowing that you're eating a quality product that you can use completely and has been grown in good soil without having been shipped across an ocean to reach you, look out for NZ garlic.

Beef Stew with Lime, Chilli and Kumara

Cube about 400g of stewing steak (to serve 2 adults, 1 toddler and to leave enough for one lunch)

Finely slice a small head of garlic
Deseed and finely slice one small red chilli (You can up this amount if you are a chilli fiend - I went on the awfully mild side because my lovely wife is a chilliphobe and I thought I should be careful not to burn Isaac's mouth or else he might never eat chilli anything again!)
Grate the zest from half a lime. Combine all the above in a metal bowl. Add the juice of half a lime, a big swig of soy sauce, some freshly ground pepper, a splash of olive oil, and a T of brown sugar. Put aside to marinade for at least half an hour.

Heat some oil (I use Rice Bran Oil for my basic cooking) in a heavy pan and start frying up the fat you've removed from the meat. This is just to get the flavour of the meat into the onion base. While you can eat this cooked fat, I don't recommend it. It might seem crunchy and nice at first, but it doesn't go down quite the same as crackling.

Preheat the oven to 210c.

Normally I would make a base for the stew of onions and carrots, but our visit to the market today convinced me to deviate from this plan ever so slightly. We got some lovely carrots with the tops still on, which I couldn't bear to chop up, and we got some really cheap tomatoes, some of which were on the way out.

Roughly chop one large onion and four overripe tomatoes. Remove the beef fat from the pan, cook the onions and tomatoes until softened (about 7 minutes) and then place in an oven dish that has a lid. Add a little extra oil to loosen up the pan, get the oil very hot, then add the meat. As liquid runs off the meat into the pan, drain through a sieve back into the metal bowl, and tap any solid flavour in the sieve back into the pan. Repeat this until the meat is able to brown nicely, probably about 3 times. Into the metal bowl with the juices, add a cup of hot water and half an Oxo Beef Stock Cube. If you have a cup of beef stock, this will do the trick as well. Stand this by.

When the meat is brown all over and just starting to crisp, remove from the pan into the oven dish with the onions. Heat the pan again and add about 1/4 Cup of Red Wine. Use a spatula to stir up all the residual flavours from the pan, then add the stock mixture. Allow this to reduce. Mix up 1t of cornflour in 1/2 a Cup of cold water and add gradually. You may not need to put all the cornflour mixture in, just judge it as you go. Continue to reduce the gravy, allowing it to thicken, until its about the consistency of cream.

Peel and chop a kumara into bite-size pieces. Pour the gravy into the oven dish and add in the kumara. Combine all and place in the oven, covered. Cook at 210c for 25mins, then reduce to 190c for a further 1 1/2 hrs.

Meanwhile, get your dumplings ready. This comes pretty much straight from the Edmonds CookBook, so if you don't have this fine kitchen manual, I strongly suggest you find a copy. Sift 1.25C of Flour, 1t Baking Powder, a pinch of salt and the other half of the Oxo Cube into a bowl. Add a shake of dried mixed herbs and 50g of butter, cubed. If you have a pastry blender, this is an easy way to crumble up the ingredients. If not, just rub it through your fingers until it feels like a light crumble. Then add milk or water a little at a time until the dough forms into a sticky mass.

The stew should cook for 2 hours, and the dumplings should go in for the last half hour. Get the stew out of the oven. If it seems a little dry, add a splash of hot water over the top. Spoon the dumpling dough over the stew in balls, replace the lid and return to the oven for the final half hour.


For the veges tonight, I sliced the carrots lengthwise so that they still felt all rural what with their tops on and all. I steamed them for about 10 minutes and put the fresh green beans into the steamer for the last 2 minutes. Crunchy fresh veges with tender beef and chewy dumplings! With the fire going and the rain walking down the windows, it was a great night to be inside.

It Begins with Sugar Free Stew

Firstly, lets be clear about one thing. Normally, I remember everything thats meant to go into my cooking. Being sent home sick from work on Friday, I have to admit I wasn't really on form on Saturday when I started on one of my famous stews. To put that in perspective, I rarely work off actual recipes anyway, but there are certain things that must be done. So it was rather unfortunate that with Uncle K coming to dinner, I missed out the critical dosage of brown sugar necessary to balance the balsamic vinegar that gives the beef its melty texture.

On top of that, I thought that rather than my tried and true dumplings, modified only slightly from the classic Edmonds Cookbook recipe, I'd have a go at Yorkshire pudding. Well, there's some work needing to be done to get those right. I'm sure that its not meant to form a dark crust on the underside that tastes more like burnt toast than either Yorkshire or pudding. I'll give them another go at some point, maybe doing it in muffin tins like C has suggested. Until then, it'll be dumplings all the way.

Luckily, the homemade bread came out perfectly, but you get that after about 6 years practice. Thanks to L for the extra cheese in the fridge.

Despite the hiccups (no pun intended), everything got eaten and was well enjoyed by all, even the obligatory steamed broccoli and cauli. Dinner was followed by Celtic beer and the David Fincher mini-epic Zodiac, which was longer than it needed to be, but nicely shot, before discussions about building fences and gates.

Sugar Free Stew (with optional recommended Sugar) - Serves 3 (plus one 1-yr old)

600g Topside Beef - cube and season with freshly ground nutmeg, salt & pepper, olive oil, worcester sauce, balsamic vinegar, dried tarragon, carraway seeds, 2 bay leaves, flour to coat. This is also where, if you remember, you should add the brown sugar. Leave to stand for at least 15 minutes. Chop 2 onions, 2 carrots, and a bulb of garlic.

Preheat the oven to 200c.

Brown meat in hot oil in batches. Place browned meat in an ovenproof dish with a lid, and put the onions, carrots and garlic into the hot pan. Wilt lightly, then add a good splash of soy sauce. Simmer that for a few minutes. Remove to the dish with the meat, and heat the pan before adding:
1/2 cup of red cooking wine, 1 1/2 cups of beef stock with about 2 T of condensed tomato paste. Deglaze the pan, scraping all the sticky good stuff off the bottom. If you have forgotten the brown sugar before this point, this is also a good time to add it. When the gravy has reduced by about 1/3, drain it off into the oven dish. Add hot water to cover the stew, stir everything together, and place in the centre of the oven.

Cook for as long as possible, preferably about 3 hours.

Serve with fresh bread and dumplings. Watch this space for that recipe at a later date. Good with a bold red wine, such as a Shiraz.

D