Beef Stew with Organic Vegetables.

Shock! Horror! An actual blog post! This blog, despite my intentions of doing NaNoWriMo, and of using it for entries too long for tumblr, has lain abandoned for far too long (I ended up needing to google to remember what platform I started it on!) nevertheless, I'm back, and with a blog entry! With pictures!

Beef stew with pearl barley, portebello mushroom, swede, carrots, potatoes and spring greens.

We join the action fairly late in the game, I've already made the stew at this point, but stew is rarely photogenic. I browned the meat in one pan and onions and garlic in another (everything has to be separate for my love who has allergies) and then added half the meat to the onions once they had softened. You want to give the garlic less time than the onions so it doesn't colour too much and become bitter.  

Wait for the meat to become brown, without burning. The browning is Maillard reactions at work and that's what gives you the lovely colour and flavour. I was frying all this in butter, but a slick of oil will do just as well. For the next part you do want butter though, a nice pat of it to melt over the meat and the onions before you sift in some flour. I'll admit that at least half the time I just shake some in from the bag, but sifting will make it less prone to lumps. Stir this vigorously until all the flour is combined with the butter and the meat grease, it will coat everything in the pan and that's fine, look for a texture like wet sand. Some people find it easier to add more butter and thus have a wetter roux (that flour and butter mixture you just made, the thing that thickens most stews and gravies and sauces, such a versatile little thing) 

Now add boiling water, a little at a time until you have a floury paste, stiring often and breaking up any lumps. There will come a point where you can just add the rest of the water, just don't do it too soon or you'll end up with lumps of flour floating in your stew. (there are ways to fix that if it does happen, but it's a lot of hassle, small lumps are ok, they'll cook out) You want your pan about two thirs full. Add bay leaf, pepper corns (I tend to open up my pepper grinder and take a pinch of the crushed corns at the top) a glug of Worcestershire sauce, a couple of beef oxo (or other stock cubes) and a generous pour of dark soy sauce, pop a lid on and leave it to simmer.

Peel and chop your root veg, I try and add the ones that are hardest, and take longest to cook, first. So, swede, then carrots, then potato in this case. Leave that to cook for 30 mins or so before adding your pear barley and chopped mushrooms. the barley is a great thickener and grows quite a lot so don't add more than a handful or two. leave it for another hour and a half, checking that the water level doesn't get too low. I'd suggest going back every 20mins or so, once that barely is cooking it runs the risk of sticking, so make sure to give it a good stir and scrape everything up from the bottom!

Now, your stew would be fine, and mighty tasty, at this point, but I like to have something fresh and green in mine. So, grab your spring greens.

The first thing my grandmother allowed me to do in her kitchen was to tear the center stems out of spring greens and kale.

 I'm not sure she let me cut anything in her kitchen until I was at catering college, she's mightly particular about how things are done! 

Tear those centre stems out and any particularly thick veins. Lie the leaves flat on top of each other in as neat a pile as you can manage and then form them into a tight roll. This will help you get a nice thin shred (if you did it properly it would be a chiffonade this?...not so much.)

Wash it well and add it to your stew

At the back you can see the version missing onion, garlic, pearl barley, mushroom and greens. 

The things we do for love!

Then just pop a lid on and in five minutes you're good to go!

Hearty, meaty, warm. Just the thing we needed on a cold January night.

 

All it needs is fresh ground salt and black pepper, and maybe a swirl of good wholegrain mustard or horseradish sauce.

All the veg other than the potatoes are from my veg box that arrived today, from Riverford along with blood oranges (such a treat for me!)