Saturday, March 10, 2012

Cook with Ken: Red Wine Beef Stew

Date:  Mar 10, 2012

Last week, I cooked a dish, which suppose to be the nicest dish on the dinning table.  But due to me playing the XBox, and Mahjong, and forgot to give correct instruction to my domestic helper, the dish got burn (烧焦) and turned bitter.  Ha hahahaha But I do taste a few pieces for tasting, before I went to play the Dance Central 2.  So, I decided to post yet another easy dish, and show you how I cook it.

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Ingredients and steps:

1.  Buy nice meet for stewing.  I bought all my nice meet from Huber's Butchery.  This is a piece of Australia beef stew.

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Here is my beef stew.

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Cut it into cube pieces.

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2.  If you want to cook something nice, don't forget to use nice ingredients!  I used a nice grade white Onion (from Huber's too), and a huge Japanese onion (those you get from the Japanese section in Medi-ya or Cold Storage/Market Place).

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Dice the onions.

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3.  You need some Garlic.

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Slice it.

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4.  I uses big fat carrots from Japan.  Each carrot , cut it into 5-6 pieces.

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5.  You need some dry red wine... Let me see... Let's use a Merlot for it.  You only need 1-2 glass of red wine.  Depends on how heavy you want the taste to be.  All the Alcohol will be evaporated anyway.

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6.  Stocks.  You can use chicken stocks or like me, use whatever left over in the fridge.  So, I found a pack of Veal Stock, so, I used it.  I actually forgot to defrost the veal stock (which you can get it from Huber's Butchery or Culina, I think I bought this from Culina).  Just cut the frozen veal (ice) into pieces.

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Ignore this step, if you have defrost your veal juice.  Later just put all these into the soup and cook it.

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7.  Lastly you need the Bouquet Garni (香草束).  Normally, they sell it at the Market Place, or Cold Storage... It is just a bunch of herbs.  So, I found this for red meat, so, I bought it.  It has Thyme, Rosemary and Celery Leaf in there.  This is for Red Meat Dishes.  So, it is just perfect!

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I use a cotton string to tie it.

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8.  If after you cook the dish for 1-2 hours, you don't like the color, you can color it, give it a red tomato color, then, you prepare a can of chopped tomatoes.

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OK.  Now, let's cook this dish.  It is also very easy.  Just prepare everything, and then, cook it.

Step 1.  Heat the soup pot.  Pour in Olive oil, just a bit, thin later.  YES!  we are going to do everything in a soup pot.

Step 2.  Fried the beef stew, until it just turn golden color.  The fire should be small fire.  Don't use big fire.

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The effect should be similar to the pan frying your beef stew.  I lazy, so, I usually cook everything in one shot.

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Once it turn golden color, that is fine.  The inner part should be just red color.

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This is just about right.  Then, you scope up everything and place it on a plate.  Leave the oil in there (do not wash).

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Step 3.  Use the same oil, stir fry the onions.

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Step 4.  Put in the garlics.

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Step 4.  Put the beef back in to the pot.  Stir fried a bit (1 min).

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Step 5.  Pour in 2 glasses of red wine.

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Step 6.  Put in the veal juice.

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Step 7.  Put in the herbs.  And then, cover the pot, small fire, let it simmer and slow cook for 1 hour.

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Step 8.  You should keep stirring the soup once a while.  1 Hour later, you add in the cut carrots.  And continue to slow cook for another hour.

(This is where, I forgot to turn down the fire to small, and have less time to check and stir the soup, and the bottom part of the meat all got burned into black color.)

Luckily I tasted it at the 1 hour mark, and the red meat is really nice where the red wine taste has gone into the meat.  The meat not tender yet, but the taste is very nice.

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Anyway, since the dish is burnt, we managed to salvage the meat, cut away the black burned part, and use it for instant noodle soup.  Very nice!

So, I feel bad that I did not manage to serve this dish on that day where we had a reunion from some high school friends.

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And I am very sure it will go well with all the red we have drunk that night!

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