Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Slow cooking

Long winter days, curled by the fire or busy days out in the garden or walking in nature, the stove can be found cooking my slow food for dinner.

A classic beef casserole serves 6, is magically cooked as follows :

1 1'2 lb beef skirt
1 oz seasone dflour
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 oz butter
1 large onion
3 carrots, thickly sliced
2 teaspoons on mustard
3/4 pint of beef stock

Cut the meat in large cubes and toss in seasoned flour. Heat the oil and butter in a large fyring pan and brown the meat on all sides. Drain and place in a casserole dish.
In the heated pan, suate the oinon and carrots until the onion is just starting to colour and slightly soften. Add to the meat. Stir in the mustard into the pan and scrape the residue from the base of the pan before stirring in the stock. Stor well, bring to the boil and pour over the meat. Bring to the boil and transfer to the simmering oven for 4 to 5 hours, or electric at 140 C. Thicken gravy before serving if you like.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

I saw your recipe and couldn't resist to refer you to what we in Holland call a 'hooikist' (literally translated a 'hay box'). The link is in Dutch, but the concept is simple: a well insulated box of about 50x50cm (incl. 10 cm insulation on all sides).

Heat up your stew (or anything else that needs to simmer for a long time), put it in the box and go do something else. You may need to re-heat it after about two hours, but that's all. No need to stay by the fire, because there's no risk of burning.

I haven't got a clue if you have something similar where you live, but they were quite common here until the first half of the previous century. But they're real easy to make (and you could just use a sleeping bag to try the principle).

It's a real time and money saver.