beef, orange and ginger casserole

Not reactive as such, but worth recording.  This recipe came to me originally on a Waitrose card - I enhance and improve it every time I make it.  This was about 1.25 - 1.5kg of good quality stewing steak, which was turned into 10 generous portions (4 x 2 servings in boxes for the freezer, the rest in, er, us :).

Take 6 or so clementines, small oranges, satsumas, whatever you have.  Sometimes I boil them first, sometimes I don’t, but either way, whizz them up in a food processor.  No need to peel, thankfully.

Take a large number of shallots - I used loads, cos we love them.  Put them in a bowl, and cover with boiling water; this makes them easier to peel.  I always keep the water and put it in the soup pot, as it is nicely flavoured.  After about 5 minutes, or when your fingers can cope, fish them out and peel them.

Cut up some carrots into batons, or thick slices - whatever you like, really.

Cut the steak into mouth size bits, and brown it in batches in olive oil,  in a big casserole.  Set it aside as it’s done.

Then into the oil put the shallots and carrots, and stir them about for a bit, until the shallots start to brown. Add the meat back into the pan, and add the orange mush, a glass of ginger wine, a tablespoon or so of balsamic vinegar, and some water - the shalloy water would do nicely here!  You don’t want it swimming in liquid, obviously.  Season with salt and pepper, and add two or three star anise.

The recipe suggests an hour in the oven - I much prefer to do it slowly, so gas mark 2 for about 3-4 hours.

It goes awfully well with mashed potato and cabbage - trust me on this.

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beef and borlotti bean stew

Using up: ribeye steak, tin of borlotti beans, 2/3 jar roast yellow peppers

As previously mentioned, we brought back some meat from our Wales camping trip.  Neither Pete nor I are that fond of steak in its natural form these days - we are too old and badgery to digest it properly :) But we still had three left (P stirfried one a couple of nights ago, and it was delicious).  However, we do like a nice casserole.

So … rummaged in the cupboards and this is what I concocted.

Chopped up 2 sticks of celery, 2 carrots, 1 large courgette into small dice.  Sautéd these down with a chopped onion, several cloves of minced garlic, and a sloosh of olive oil.  I just stuck a lid on the pan and let it get on with it for 20 minutes or so.

Found two tired mushrooms in the fridge and chopped them very small - more for flavour than appearance. Retrieved the jar of roast yellow peppers that I opened last week and had forgottten (oops), and sliced up the remaining contents. Sliced the steaks into chunks and put all these in a big cast iron casserole dish.

I added a tin of borlotti beans that was so old it was going rusty (!), a tin of chopped tomatoes, half a glass or so of red wine, the sautéd veg, seasoning, and sage / thyme / rosemary from the garden.

This sat on a very low light at the back of the cooker while I cooked our supper (we always try to leave casseroles till the next day, they taste so much better), then it was put in a very slow oven to cook overnight.

At about 2.30 a.m. the smell was driving me mad, so I came down and switched it off.  I found Liessa sitting on the worktop beside the cooker, basking in the heat from the oven :)

This morning, I decanted most of it into three tubs for the freezer, while leaving enough for our supper tonight (nom nom nom).  So three steaks have made eight servings - not bad :)

p.s. Photograph taken before it went into the oven, as the “after” pic didn’t come out very well.

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