Category Archives: Stews

Fast food: creamy polenta with sausage casserole

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Polenta was non-existant in Sweden in the 80s when I grew up. We only had locally sourced food and anything ‘exotic’ was canned pineapple, bananas and peanuts. Several dishes from the 80s combine all three.

No, polenta I discovered on my own and loved from the first bite. I like the texture and the fact that it tastes of nothing until you’ve added butter and parmesan, and it is such a wonderful transformation.

I sometimes serve it simply with fried mushrooms or fried chorizo, but this time I wanted something even more soothing and comforting. The casserole is a cheat, but tastes lovely. Using French Toulouse sausages makes it as unauthentic as serving it with Spanish chorizo, but both versions work – believe me.

Just use good quality sausages as most of the flavour comes from them and season the sauce sauce to your own taste.

Creamy polenta with sausage casserole, serves 2

2 portions creamy polenta

4 Toulouse sausages

200 g tinned chopped tomatoes

50 ml water

balsamic vinegar after taste

1 pinch of sugar

salt, black pepper

grated parmesan to serve

oil for frying

Cut the skin of the sausages and push our the sausage meat. Fry it until cooked through in some oil. Add the tomatoes and water and bring to the boil and let thicken. Add balsamic vinegar, sugar and seasoning to your taste. Maybe also add some garlic. Plate the polenta and casserole, top with grated parmesan and enjoy.

 

Venison mince buorguignon

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Not evry long ago I saw that Annika at the Swedish food blog Smaskens.nu had been making a boeuf bourguignon with beef mince and I thought that was a nice thing to try. But then I remembered I had a kilo of lovely venison mince (from fallow deer) in the freezer from Sweden and tried the recipe with that.

As usual though, I made a few changes, but not all of them because I wanted to. For starters I had to use streaky bacon instead of lardons, because I couldn’t find any lardons in my local supermarket. Shame on you Sanisbury’s.

I also cooked the dish in my slowcooker while I was at work, and that worked really well.

Because venison mince is very lean (like all game) it really works to either cook it with some more fatty ingredients, like cream or to serve it with something richer. I went for the latter, because you should not have cream in a bourguignon! Instead I made a very creamy potato purée with lots of butter to serve with it. It was the perfect combination and also how Annika served hers with beef mince. Thank you for that suggestion!

Below is my own version of this dish, but I found all the inspiration here. If you fancy a proper Boeuf Bourguignon instead, then try the ultimate recipe by Julia Child.

Venison mince buorguignon, serves 4- 6

1 kg venison mince

1/2 bottle red wine

200 ml water

2 tsp concentrated beef stock

1 bouquet garni

3 whole cloves of garlic

2 sprigs thyme (taken off the stem)

2 tbsp tomato purée

salt, black pepper

Step 2:

another dash of red wine

2-3 slices carrots

2 tbsp maizena (corn starch to thicken)

1 tbsp tomato purée

season to taste with stock, salt and pepper

100 g button mushrooms

100 g lardon (or streaky bacon)

Brown the mince in butter and transfer to the slowcooker. Add wine, stock, water, garlic, herbs, tomato purée, salt and pepper. Turn it on low heat and leave it for 8 hours. Transfer the pot to the stove (or pour the stew into another pan) and add the wine, carrots, tomato purée and maizena/corn starch. Bring to the boil and let it simmer for 10 minutes to thicken and for the carrots to cook. In the meantime, fry the mishrooms in butter on high heat, then the lardons/bacon and add to the pot.

Season to taste with sugar, herbs and salt and pepper. Serve with a buttery potato purée (cook waxy potatoes until very soft, mix with a plenty of butter with a stick blender, season with salt and pepper) and creme fraiche. If you have leftovers the stew will only taste better the next day.

Boeuf Bourguignon in the slowcooker

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Since I bought my crockpot a while back it has provided me with some nice stews and a lot of pulled pork.

But would it work with the ultimate stew – the famous Julia Child Boeuf Bourguignon?

It did! I mean, it doesn’t cook itself like many other stews, but once you’ve done all the prepping, you can definitely leave the rest to the slow cooker.

I did all the chopping and frying in the morning, turned on the crockpot and went to a friend’s house for the afternoon. When I got back in the early evening, I fried some mushrooms and added them to the pot and got the potatoes roasting. Other than that supper was labour free.

Boeuf bourguignon in the slow cooker, serves 4

60 g streaky bacon

olive oil

450 g stewing steak, cut into cubes

1 small carrot, sliced

1/2 onion, sliced

salt & black pepper

10 g plain flour

230 ml red wine (Beaujolais, Cotes du Rhone, Burgundy, Chianti)

130 ml beef stock

2 tsp tomato paste

1 clove garlic, pressed

1/4-1/2 tsp thyme

1 bay leaf

150 g button mushrooms

Cut the bacon into lardons. Simmer rind and bacon for 10 minutes in water. Drain and dry. Preheat oven to 230C.

In a frying pan, sauté the bacon in oil over moderate heat for 2 to 3 minutes to brown lightly. Remove to a side dish with a slotted spoon. Leave frying pan aside. Reheat until fat is almost smoking before you sauté the beef.

Dry the beef; it will not brown if it is damp. Sauté it, a few pieces at the time, in the hot oil and bacon fat until nicely brown on all sides. Add it to the bacon.

In the same fat, brown the sliced carrot and onion. Place the bacon, meat, carrots and onions in the slow cooker pot and toss with salt and pepper. Then sprinkle on the flour and toss again to coat the beef lightly with the flour. Place casserole uncovered in the middle position of preheated oven for 4 minutes. Toss the meat and return to oven for 4 minutes more. (This browns the flour and covers the meat with a light crust.) Remove casserole and turn the oven off.

Stir in the wine, and enough stock so that the meat is barely covered. Add the tomato paste, garlic and herbs. Turn the slow cooker on low heat and leave it for 5 hours.

Before serving, fry the mushrooms. Place a frying pan over a high heat with some butter and oil. As soon as you see that the butter foam hasbegun to subside, indicating that it is hot enough, add the mushrooms (washed, well dried, left whole if small, sliced or quartered if large). Toss and shake the pan for 4 to 5 minutes. During this the mushrooms will first absorb the fat. In 2 to 3 minutes the fat will reappear on their surface, and the mushrooms will begin to brown. As soon as they have browned lightly, remove from the heat.

If the sauce is too thick, remove the meat and add some stock. Check the seasoning. Put the meat back. Add the mushrooms and heat up. If the sauce is not thick enough, remove the meat and reduce the juices. Check seasoning, put the mat back, add the mushrooms and warm up to serve. The sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon lightly.

 

My everyday chilli

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I adore comfort food, and I love when eating something makes you feel better. Sometimes you notice the physical effects straight away; your belly feels full, you get energy again and you stop feeling dizzy. But it almost always, at least if it is well cooked food, makes you happier. If I am down it helps to eat. Not for the sake of eating, but everything feels a bit better after you have eaten something warming and your belly is full.

With the autumn, or nearly winter, hitting London, I feel I need something comforting for supper almost everyday. That warm embrace of hearty food is difficult to beat and for me a few things hits the bull’s eye. Creamy dishes and casseroles or soup. This is from the latter category and really does the trick. With a bit of a kick to it as well as the melted cheese on top and the bread to soak up the juices in the bowl this qualifies as one of the best autumnal comfort dishes out there, don’t you think?!

My everyday chilli, serves 6

1 kg beef mince

2 cans á 400 g chopped tomatoes (of good quality), one with chilli if available

100 ml water

1/2 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves

3 tsp cumin

3-4 tsp chipotle paste

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

6-7 drops tabasco

2 tbsp mild chilli sauce

1 tbsp tomato purée

a pinch of brown sugar

2 tbsp  balsamic vinegar

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

400 g kidney beans, canned – rinsed and drained

Fry the meat in a large pan. Add salt and pepper. Remove the meat and pour out the meat juices. Fry the onions and garlic until soft but not browned in olive oil. Add the meat, chopped tomatoes and water. Bring to the boil. Add everything but the beans. Season and add more spices if needed. Let it boil until the sauce has thickened. Add the beans and cook for another few minutes to warm up the beans.

Serve with grated cheese, sourcream and bread. And perhaps some salad.

Lamb stew with red wine, cream, mushrooms and thyme

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Last week I did what one is suppose to do with a slowcooker – I made it cook dinner for me while I was at work. And it worked a charm.

I browned the meat the night before and seasoned it. The following morning I added the meat, red wine, water , garlic and a bay leaf, put it on the lowest setting and left it for 10 hours.

When I opened the door to the flat in the evening, it smelt wonderful. I just reduced the sauce, added cream, thyme and fried mushrooms and served it with a swede and potato mash.

It was absolutely wonderful and the meat just fell apart it was so tender. I highly recommending a slowcooker, as it takes less energy than having the oven on, and it feels safer leaving it on during the day. But you can make this stew in a regular oven too, I would probably put the temperature to 80C maximum and leave it in there for at least 5-6 hours.

Because of the low cooking temperature, the meat releases a lot of liquid, so I highly recommend to take out the mat and reduce the sauce on the hob until it has thickened up. This also concentrates the flavour and I would recommend this with all kinds of dishes, including i.e. pulled pork, where you shred the meat and mix it with the juices. It works better when it is less watery.

Lamb stew with red wine, cream, mushrooms and thyme, serves 3-4

500 g stewing lamb (on the bone, in pieces)

butter for frying

salt, black pepper

400 ml red wine (for cooking you can use old opened bottles, so don’t throw any leftover wine away, save it for a stew instead)

1 garlic clove

1 bayleaf

100 ml water

200 g button mushrooms, cut in four

200 ml single cream

50 ml red wine

1 tsp fresh thyme

1/2 tbsp mild chilli sauce

1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce

colouring agent

salt, pepper

Brown the meat in the morning or the night before, in butter. Season. Before leaving the house in the morning, add the meat, wine and water to the Crockpot . Also add garlic and a bay leaf. Stir and turn the slowcooker on at the lowest heat. Put the lid on and leave it until you come home 9-10 hours later.

Then fry the mushrooms ans season. Remove the meat from the sauce and put the whole casserole on the hob (if you have a gas hob at least) or use a small sauce pan to redue the sauce on high heat. Stir occasionally and once it has thickened add the spices and seasonings. Colour until light brown. Add the meat and mushrooms. Heat ut up again if necessary and serve. A root mash, potato mash or boiled potatoes work well. 

Chorizo stew with carrot and parsnip

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Both Christopher and I are fond of the chorizo. It is so versatile and gives so much flavour to its company. I came up with this recipe the other day and it was a real hit! The sweetness from the root vegetables and brown sugar together with the paprika heat from the chorizo and the the sourness from the tomatoes really worked. The cumin just took it that step further and added some earthiness.

Chorizo stew with carrot and parsnip, serves 2

chilli oil

1/2 chorizo ring

2 carrots

1 large parsnip

1 red onion

400 g chopped tomatoes

150 ml water

1 pressed garlic clove

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp dark brown sugar

2 tbsp Heinz chilli sauce (or other mild chilli sauce)

salt

concentrated chicken stock

white pepper

Slice the chorizo and fry it in chilli oil in a large sauce pan. Remove to a bowl. Peel and dice the root vegetables and the onion, and add to the pan. Fry on medium heat for a few minutes, then add the chopped tomatoes and the water. Bring to a boil and let it boil for a few minutes until the vegetables are soft. Add the spices, seasoning and stock. Add the chorizo. Serve with rice and a dollop of creme fraiche or sour cream. Really tasty!

Rabbit stew with cider

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I know that eating rabbit might not be politically correct, but it is very tasty. More and more restaurants are serving rabbit and you can buy it from Ocado (like I did). The meat is very tender and juicy and looks and taste similar to darker chicken meat. The rabbit meat is just tastes a bit sweeter.

This was the first time I cooked rabbit, and after looking around on different recipes I realised that cider was a common accompaniement and went for that.

Rabbit stew with cider, serves 3

olive oil

300 g rabbit meat in chunks

4 slices streaky bacon, smoked, in small pieces

flour

1 large schallots or a small regular onion

1/2 fennel, in slices

2 carrots, sliced

2 sprigs of fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

salt and pepper

1 dash concentrated game stock

500 ml dry cider

1 tsp honey

1 small garlic clove, pressed

1 tsp tomato paste

coloring agent (not necessary)

Fry the bacon in some olive oil and remove from frying pan. Fry the meat in the bacon fat until nice and brown, season with salt and pepper. Remove and put with the bacon in a casserole dish. Sprinkle on some flour and shake the dish to coat all the meat. Put the dish without lid in 175C for 5-10 minutes. Shake it and put it back in for another 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile, fry the fennel, onion and carrot in the same frying pan as before for a few minutes but don’t let them brown. Pour the vegetables into the casserole, add the cider, honey, stock and add the herbs too. Put the lid on and leave it in the oven for about an hour.

Strain the casserole after an hour and remove the herbs. Reduce the sauce to the thickness you want. I added tomato paste, garlic, salt and pepper and colouring agent. Serve with rice or roast potatoes.

Swedish peasant food: stewed spinach, fried potatoes, eggs and frankfurters

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My mother used to (and still does) distinguish weekday food from weekend food. On weeknights we used to have mostly peasant food like meatballs, sausages and mash, soups etc and on the weekends she would go all out with fillet of beef, seafood etc.

Fry the potatoes...

...until they're done.

I take after her, I always make the weekends something extra, I definitely spend more money on meat for the weekends, but my weekday food can sometimes be quite different from my parents’. I use more pasta and make different kind of soups, whereas my dad would be happy with boiled potatoes five days a week. I need to mix it up a little and try new things. But sometimes I go back to the peasant food. Last week I made this stewed spinach served with lots of fried things; diced potatoes, eggs and frankfurters (it works with bacon too).

Nice and green!

I have actually never made this before, or asked my mother for a recipe, but I was really happy that it tasted like my mother’s version. Yum!

Stewed spinach, fried potatoes, eggs and frankfurters, serves 2

4 large potatoes

butter

olive oil

salt

white pepper

sugar

flour

milk

nutmeg

frozen chopped spinach

eggs

frankfurters

Peel the potatoes and cut into small dices. Fry in plenty of butter and oilve oil on medium heat until they’re done. Season with salt, white pepper and 2 pinches of sugar (very important and the key to perfect fried potatoes). Make a roux of butter and flour, add milk (warm milk makes it quicker), stir the whole time and let it thicken. Season with nutmeg, salt and white pepper. Add as much frozen chopped spinach as you think is good (I used about 400 g for 750 ml milk). Let the spinach heat up. Fry eggs and frankfurters and serve with the potatoes and spinach-bechamel.

Chorizo and butter bean stew

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Christopher is of the opinion that I cook too much with butter and/or cream and sometimes I listen to what he has to say. ;-) Without any dairy products I tested (and altered) this recipe by Jamie Oliver. I’m very proud. 

Our nearest supermarket is a real messy one. The other day I was looking for glue for 15 minutes before I gave up, and before that I was searching for lightbulbs for 10 minutes because it wasn’t signposted or logical at all in there. On top of that, the fish counter is terrible, they only have salmon, and all over the shop they sell out or don’t stock it properly. It’s not for me. And since it’s not a Waitrose either (I heart Waitrose) I’m incredibly happy with my Ocado deliveries. It is great to avoid the stress of shopping while hungry on your way home from work, and lovely not to have to carry the heavy bags at all.  

Only downside is that when they are out of stock, they choose what to replace it with. In this case I had ordered proper chorizo sausages, but ended up with the thinly sliced version. No harm done, it tasted lovely, but the texture of the other sausage would have made it so much better. Oh well. Next time.

Chorizo and butterbean stew, serves 3-4

1 onion, chopped

1-2 cloves garlic, pressed

250-200 g chorizo, sliced

olive oil

400 g tinned chopped tomatoes

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

a dash concentrated stock

salt and black pepper

2 tsp smoked paprika

400 g tinned butterbeans

a large handful spinach

optional: vegeble stock to thin the stew

Heat up some olive oil in a pan and fry the inion, garlic and chorizo for a couple of minutes, without browning very much. Add the tomatoes, stock, vinegar and spices and season to taste. Let it simmer for a few minutes, and add some stock if you think it is too thick. Add the beans and the spinach and let it simmer for another couple of minutes. Serve with rice and garlic bread. Autumnal and warming!

Boeuf bourguignon

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How many of you have seen the film Julie and Julia? As soon as I finished watching the film I just had to buy the cookbook at Amazon. I have read it and love it, but most recipes are time consuming and not everyday dinners perhaps. At least not for me when I come home grumpy and need something quick. But yesterday, I had a whole day to cook, and I thought it was a perfect opportunity to start autumn in my kitchen, with a nice stew. Even though I worship the sun, I am actually longing for the autumn. I want it to be a few degrees cooler so I can start wearing autumn clothes, and enjoy the season as the trees drop their leaves. Instead it is 18 degrees and the flat is roasting when I have the oven on for more or less a whole day. Supper, however, was delightful! It was exactly so delicious I had pictured it in my head, and that is usually quite difficult to live up too.

I converted the recipe to metric and centigrade and divided it by three to serve two.

The cookbook!

The finished casserole

Boeuf bourguignon with roast potatoes

 

Julia Child’s Boeuf bourguignon, serves 2

60 g streaky bacon

olive oil

450 g stewing steak, cut into cubes

1 small carrot, sliced

1/2 onion, sliced

salt & black pepper

10 g plain flour

230 ml red wine (Beaujolais, Cotes du Rhone, Burgundy, Chianti)

130 ml beef stock

2 tsp tomato paste

1 clove garlic, pressed

1/4-1/2 tsp thyme

1 bay leaf

6 small onions (such as shallots)

150 g button mushrooms

Cut the bacon into lardons. Simmer rind and bacon for 10 minutes in water. Drain and dry. Preheat oven to 230C.

In the casserole dish, sauté the bacon in oil over moderate heat for 2 to 3 minutes to brown lightly. Remove to a side dish with a slotted spoon. Leave casserole aside. Reheat until fat is almost smoking before you sauté the beef.

Dry the beef; it will not brown if it is damp. Sauté it, a few pieces at the time, in the hot oil and bacon fat until nicely brown on all sides. Add it to the bacon.

In the same fat, brown the sliced carrot and onion. Pour out the sautéing fat. Return the beef and the bacon to the casserole and toss with salt and pepper. Then sprinkle on the flour and toss again to coat the beef lightly with the flour. Place casserole uncovered in the middle position of preheated oven for 4 minutes. Toss the meat and return to oven for 4 minutes more. (This browns the flour and covers the meat with a light crust.) Remove casserole, and turn oven down to 165C.

Stir in the wine, and enough stock so that the meat is barely covered. Add the tomato paste, garlic and herbs. Bring to a simmering point on top of the stove. Then cover the casserole and place in lower part of the preheated oven. Regulate heat so that liquid simmers very slowly for 3 to 4 hours. The meat is done when a fork pierces it easily.

While the beef is cooking, prepare the onions and mushrooms. Leave them aside until needed.

Put butter and oil in a frying pan and wsit for it to get bubbling, then add the onions and sauté over a moderate heat for about 10 minutes, rolling the onions about so that they brown as evenly as possible. Be careful not to break their skins. You cannot to expect to brown them uniformly.

Then pour in 100 ml or so of beef stock and a small bay leaft, some parsley sprigs and a little thyme. Cover and simmer slowly for 40 to 50 minutes until the onions are perfectly tender but retain their shape, and the liquid has evaporated.

Place a frying pan over a high heat with some butter and oil. As soon as you see that the butter foam hasbegun to subside, indicating that it is hot enough, add the mushrooms (washed, well dried, left whole if small, sliced or quartered if large). Toss and shake the pan for 4 to 5 minutes. During this the mushrooms will first absorb the fat. In 2 to 3 minutes the fat will reappear on their surface, and the mushrooms will begin to brown. As soon as they have browned lightly, remove from the heat.

When the meat is tender, pour the contents of the casserole into a sieve placed over a saucepan. Wash out the casserole and return the beef and bacon to it. Distribute the cooked onions and mushrooms over the meat.

Skim fat off the sauce. Simmer sauce for a minute or two, skimming off additional fat as it rises (I didn’t need to do this). The sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon lightly. If too thin, boil it down rapidly. if too thick, mix in a few tablesppons of stock. Taste carefully for seasoning. Pour the sauce over the meat and vegetables.

Cover the casserole and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, basting the meat and vegetables with the sauce several times. Serve in its casserole, or arrange on a dish surrounded with potatoes, noodles or rice, decorated with parsley.

Tradionally, boiled potatoes are served with boeuf borguignon but we chose to serve it with roast potatoes, and it was perfect. The middle of the potatoes are a bit liked boiled potatoes, but the outsides are nice and crisp.

I have never roasted potatoes this way, but it seems to be the common way of roasting potatoes for a Sunday roast.

Roast potatoes

Peel potatoes and either leave them whole or cut in half, or if exceptionally big potatoes, cut in quarters. You want quite big pieces. Boil the potatoes nearly done, for 15 minutes or so. Place on a hot roasting dish and coat them lightly with either vegetable oil or (even better) goose fat. Roast in 200C for about 40 minutes.

We roasted them for 30 minutes or so on the same temperature as the casserole, 165C and then turned it up to 200C when I was thinning/thickening the sauce and roasted them for another 20 minutes. It works fine to heat up the vegetables in the casserole on this temperature for a few minutes.