Recipe - My Mum's Parker's Beef Stew

When me and Jon were at home last week my mum made this great Beef stew. I'm not sure which recipe book she got the recipe from but it was a Parker's Beef Stew and it was yummy. So I thought I would share the recipe she used.

Source

Ingredients
2.5lbs steak (cut in to chunks)
1 bottle red wine
1tspn lazy garlic (3 crushed cloves)
3 bay leaves
Fresh Rosemary (3/4 sprigs)
5 ounces baco (chopped)
2 cups all purpose flour
2 onions (chopped)
olive oil
1.5lbs carrots (chopped)
1.5lbs potatoes (chopped)
14.5 ounces beef stock
1 small jar sun-dried tomatoes in oil (chopped or a tin of tomatoes if you prefer)
2tbsp Worcestershire sauce
10 ounce frozen peas
salt and pepper

1. Place beef, garlic. bay leaves and red wine in a covered bowl. Chill overnight or for a minimum of 4 hours.
2. After that brown bacon in olive oil in frying pan. When browned place in a large casserole.
3. In a bowl mix flour and a little salt and pepper. Take steak out of bowl and cover in flour mix until well coated. Discard bay leaves.
4. In frying pan add a little more oil and fry the steak in batches until golden (but not completely cooked) then add to casserole.
5. Pre-heat oven to 160 (or equivalent). Fry onions, carrots and potatoes in oil for around 10 minutes on a medium heat stirring well, place in casserole
6. Add the wine mixture (from bowl), beef stock, tomatoes and rosemary to frying pan (scraping any segments from the bottom into the juice, to add to the taste) Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 3-4mins.
7. Pour over the casserole and mix. Cook in oven for 2 hours, stir once or twice during cooking.
8. When cooked mix 2 ladles of juice from casserole with 2tbsp of flour then mix back in to stew. Add peas and cook for a further 5mins. Add s&p to taste and serve.

Hope you enjoy it!

Daisymay x

Recipe Post -Potato and Vegetable Bake

I'm hoping now that I am back blogging and started to get my time management and writing stuff in order that I will be able to post more recipe posts too. (generally I hope to be able to post more of everything, not much to ask, lol) But there is a specific reason behind this one. Down in Cardiff (and in other places across the UK) the co-op are helping schools and community groups raise money and awareness of healthy eating by providing fruit and veg bags for sale to the community. I am now buying bags weekly from a local school in the hope of eating more healthily and cooking more fresh foods (as well as being less wasteful and more ecologically friendly). So every week I will be looking for and cooking a new veg based dish to use up the items I have in the bags, which will be different every week depending on the season.

So this week I decided to try a recipe out of the Greek Cooking book I had for christmas. I didn't have any meat in the house and didn't want to go out for extra ingredients so found a Courgette and Potato Bake recipe that I figured I could adapt to use the veg I had.

Here is the original recipe: (it feeds 4 as main course or 6 as a side dish)

1.5lb courgette

1lb potatoes

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

1 large pepper

400g can chopped tomatoes

150ml virgin olive oil

150ml hot water

1 tsp oregano

3 tbsp fresh parsley

salt and pepper

I altered it slightly (ok a fair bit) and decided to cut the recipe down to feed 2 (or just me)

So I used:

2 potatoes

half and onion

half a pepper

1 celery stick

1 garlic clove

6 mushrooms

half a tin of chopped tomatoes

Chopped mixed herbs

50ml water

50ml oil

It's a super easy meal to make.

• Pre-heat oven to 190 C/ 375 F/Gas 5
• Chop all the veg and place them in a overproof dish. Add the water, oil, herbs and chopped tomatoes and mix it all up well.
• Place in the oven for 30 minutes
• Remove from oven and add a bit more water and stir it all well to stop veg sticking to the pan (my potatoes did just a little) Return to oven for another 45mins (recipe said an hour but mine was done in 45mins)
• Remove and serve either as a dish on it's own with some salad or as a side dish.

It was really yummy, super easy and very healthy - plus cheap!

I totally loved it and did manage to eat the whole bowl for my dinner

Do you have any great veg recipes I can try out? I really want to experiment more with my food this year and these bags are giving me the perfect opportunity to.

Daisymay X

Recipe Post - Spanish Beef Stew with Smashed Potatoes

Sorry the post is so late but it's been a busy day! My course is going well, just one more day.

So here is the recipe post I promised yesterday. As the title says its Spanish Beef Stew with Smashed Potato! And it was really yummy. The recipe came from the Good Food 101 meals for two book, but I altered it a little to suit us.

So you will need

1 onion

3 beef stewing steaks (although I used regular lean steaks)

1 large pepper (colour your choice, but I love red ones)

A small pile of chopped green beans

1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

1 spring of finely chopped fresh rosemary

Garlic glove (or lazy garlic! Great stuff!)

New potatoes

Milk

Butter

Salt and Pepper to season

Give your potatoes a good wash and pop them into boil. You can take the skins off but I leave them on mine as I rather them like this and it keeps the goodness in.

Finely chop the onion and fry it in a saucepan with a little oil and the garlic if you are using a fresh one.

Chop all the veg and slice the steak into thin strips.

Put the pepper, beans, steak, rosemary and tomatoes (plus garlic if using lazy garlic) in with the onion and slowly bring to the boil. You may find it useful to add a few ml's of boiling water if your chopped tomatoes don't have a lot of liquid with them. When it is boiling turn it down to a simmer and heat for 15mins, occasionally stirring to stop anything from catching.

In the meantime your potatoes should be almost cooked. When they are done, drain then mash adding a dash of milk and a large dollop of butter. I like mine really buttery but make yours to taste.

Season the stew with salt and pepper to taste and serve straight away with the potatoes. I sprinkled a little parmesan on top but that is totally up to you.

And thats all. It was more or less enough for 3 people as I like to have a little extra so I can freeze some for the next day, although in this case Jon just ate it all as seconds, lol. Its really flavourful and filling, plus really quite healthy.

Hope you all like! If you try it drop me a line so I know what you think.

Daisymay X

p.s. just a few more followers to my giveaway.