beef

Donna Hay’s Beef with Cannellini Beans

- Alex 2 Comments

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Another insanely easy, quick mid week dinner for you. This recipe comes from Donna Hay’s Fast, Fresh, Simple, via the Good Food Channel.

You may have noticed that I am a huge fan of cannellini beans. Indeed, I’m a big fan of beans in general and I’d urge everyone to have a good collection of tinned beans in their cupboards. They’re cheap, nutritious and can solve a variety of food related problems.

Anyway, while Andy was dealing with the barbecue and two generous porterhouse steaks (that’s sirloin if you’re reading from the UK) I was opening the tin of cannellini beans.

ALWAYS rinse (and drain) the beans when they come out of the tin. Firstly, they always smell horrible and secondly, often tinned things are very salty and a good rinse helps to reduce that.

In a small saucepan I had some olive oil heating up into which I put a some crushed, minced garlic and some finely chopped fresh rosemary. In went the beans to heat through along with a good squeeze of lemon juice.

At this point I decided to mash the beans coarsely with the back of a fork. This, I think, was a mistake. It would have been much nicer to have the beans whole.

I thought the mixture tasted good and was really tempted not to add the horseradish. Andy tasted it and thought it needed the horseradish, otherwise it was just like “that dip you make“. I think the horseradish is really up to you – you may prefer to serve it on the side so you can slather your beef in it.

Of course, steak and a few beans does not a whole meal make.  We served with salad and some roasted potato wedges.

Another big win for meal planning and quick, easy, midweek dinners.

Chilli Con Carne

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Apologies for yet another Mexican themed post … but this time it’s home cooking, so if you’re not in Adelaide (or you can’t get yourself to one of the many places popping up) you can replicate a bit of Mexico in your own kitchen. Well, it might not be Mexico, but it’s Paul Merrett’s take on Mexico.

What I really liked about this chilli con carne recipe is that it doesn’t feature any hard to track down ingredients. In fact, the chances are that you’ll have most of them in your cupboard so your shopping list will be slim. What’s also novel is that Merrett serves the chilli in tortillas with all the extras. This was something we both really loved and it makes a diverting change from fajitas.

As this dish is based on beef mince, it’s important to choose a time to cook this when you can give it a good, long, slow cook. Any dish like this (think things like Bolognese sauce) needs time to mesh all the flavours together and to make sure that any raw beef or tomato flavours are fully cooked out.

Naturally, I departed from the original recipe a little …

Heat a little oil in a large saucepan, and fry off a finely sliced onion and four cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped. Add 700g (I think I actually had 680g but you get the idea) of minced beef and cook this for a bit. I didn’t bother waiting for it all to start going brown (I would have been there all afternoon) but I did wait for it to start to look a bit cooked. I then added 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp paprika and chilli powder to taste (I used hot ground chillis and used somewhere between ¼ and ½ tsp and it was warmer than I expected). I then added 250mL of open rosé that I had hanging around, a generous splash of Worcestershire sauce, 1 tin of crushed tomatoes, and one concentrated beef stock jelly thing.

At this point, you need to give the pot a stir and judge whether or not you need to add a bit more water.

Rinse (and drain) a tin of red kidney beans and add these, stir everything and leave it to tick over for a good couple of hours. I didn’t need to add any salt but you may wish to adjust the seasoning.

When it comes to serving, spoon some of the chilli onto a warmed tortilla and add some sour cream, grated cheese, shredded lettuce, and some sliced onion and spring onion. Wrap and eat.

Of course, the chilli works perfectly well outside the tortilla (and, indeed, I had leftovers for lunch a couple of times) so you could always serve with whatever you normally have as a Mexican accompaniment.

I loved the fact that this recipe is based around readily available ingredients – the only things I had to buy were the beef and the kidney beans. So often Mexican recipes need 3 different types of chillis that can only be bought at Mexican specialist shops. It was super quick to put together (letting something sit on the stove is not work!) and it was tasty. Having it in tortillas was great, and something that will definitely work over summer, but if you’re making it in the depths of winter, it’s hearty and warming.

Definitely something I’ll be making again.

Vietnamese Shaking Beef

- Alex 1 Comment

Even though I am ‘at home’ most of the week I don’t have nearly as much time as I’d like for cooking exciting and elaborate dinners. So I am always on the lookout for tasty things that I can get out of the kitchen in reasonable time.

Trawling through my delicious bookmarks I spotted this recipe for Vietnamese Shaking Beef. A quick google indicates that this is an actual Vietnamese dish but I can’t comment on how authentic this recipe is. All I know is that it’s pretty quick, doesn’t require a raft of ingredients and is really tasty.

The recipe comes in three parts: marinade, dipping sauce and the actual stir fry.

The marinade is really simple: for about 500g of rump steak use 1 generous tbsp of oil (use a neutral oil such as peanut), one large clove of garlic, minced, a splash of fish sauce, 1 tsp of sugar and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Fresh black pepper is a big part of this recipe, so grab the peppercorns and the grinder now!

Chop your 500g of steak into chunky bite size cubes and marinate for at least half an hour.

The dipping sauce is equal parts water and lime juice (I used ⅓ of a cup of each), with (again) minced garlic and fresh black pepper and balanced with a touch of salt and sugar.

When you’re ready to cook the steak, heat some oil in a wok, fry off some more minced garlic and add the steak, along with some more black pepper. The ‘shaking’ part of the dish’s name comes in now – as you’re supposed to keep the meat moving in the wok. You want to brown the meat and cook it but ideally you’ll leave it at least medium rare.

Finish the stir frying with a splash of soy sauce and a sprinkling of sugar.

Serve the cubes of beef on lettuce, with sliced tomato and steamed rice on the side. Pour a little of the dipping sauce over the meat and serve the remainder on the side. Whatever you do, don’t skimp on the dipping sauce – the lime juice really makes this dish!

We all rated this dish highly – definitely one we’ll be making again.