Beef & Beer Stew

Friday night we gave up pizza night for this. It was so worth it though. Don't worry we only postponed pizza night by one night!

I bought beef stew blocks. I don't know what it's called really. Those ready cut up blocks of meat. It means I don't have to worry about buying the wrong piece of meat like for steak because I still don't know which is the right part of the cow to buy.

Half way through making the stew I tasted a piece of meat and it was so tough and chewy. I thought it's going to be a disaster but at least I would have tried. I let it simmer for a full 3 hours and then another half an hour just for luck. And the meat was falling apart it was so soft! It was amazing!! You have to try this recipe. For a change I followed the recipe exactly and I wouldn't change a thing. Well maybe add some mushrooms next time, but really it didn't need anything more.

So if you want to impress somebody with a good hearty meal on a cold evening when you haven't actually done any cooking all week and feeling just a little guilty about that fact, try this one.

I had half the amount of meat the recipe used so I roughly halved about everything. It was more than enough for the two of us with some left overs. So here's the halved recipe I used:

Ingredients:

800 g beef blocks (The recipe calls it chuck roast if that means anything to you? It didn't to me.)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 T butter

2 onions, sliced

1 1/2 T flour

3/4 C chicken or beef broth (I used beef)

3/4 C Belgian beer ( I used Swiss Appenzeller)

2 sprigs fresh Thyme (I didn't have so just added some mixed dried herbs)

2 bay leaves

1/2 T whole grain mustard

1/2 T brown sugar

And here's what you do, it's really easy, like all the things I make!

1. Pat the beef dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Then melt 1 T butter and wait for it to get really really hot. You want to have it on med-high heat. Brown the meat in batches and remove from pot when you've done it all. Oh, the recipe said not to stir. Just let one side brown well, about 3 min, then turn over to brown the other side for another 3 min. I actually timed each side!

2. Add another tablespoon of butter to the pot to melt. I know, lots of butter. Normally I wouldn't use butter, but I just wanted it to be good this time and maybe it was the butter, well margarine, that made all the difference. You want medium heat now for the onions. Add the chopped onions with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Brown the onions, about 15 min. Again I timed it! Not my way of doing it normally!

Add the flour and stir about 2 min until it starts to brown slightly and the onions are well covered by the flour.

3. Stir in the broth and scrape the bottom to get all that burnt onion bits in the sauce.

Add the beer and give your husband or whoever you're going to impress with this meal the rest of the beer. Then add the thyme, bay leaves and the browned meat and if there's any juice that has accumulated in your bowl with the meat add that too. You can add more salt and pepper, but I didn't. I didn't want to over do it and in the end it didn't need any more anyway.

Increase the heat to get everything to a good simmer. Then reduce the heat to low, partially cover and let it all simmer for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally to scrape the bits sticking to the bottom of the pot.

4. About half an hour before serving, add the mustard and brown sugar.

I served it with mashed potatoes and veggies. You can also serve it on rice, noodles, french fries. Whatever you like! But I like it with mash. The mash is just good for the meat and sauce.

Gulaschsuppe (Goulash Soup)

One of my husband's favourites and something we had quite a bit of while in Germany over Christmas!

It's really easy to make, the only bit of work is chopping up the meat. I buy the ready chopped blocks of beef, but it's not quite chopped small enough for the way we like it and the way they serve it in Germany. Below are the potatoes chopped up and I chop the meat about the same size or even smaller. I forgot to take a picture of the meat so thought I'd show you the potatoes for size.

1. Fry onion and garlic in a large pot.

2. Chop beef in small bits of about 1cm.

3. Brown the meat.

4. Add one red pepper, chopped.

5. Add about 2 potatoes, also chopped in 1 cm cubes.

6. I added about 1,5 liters water. You can add more. Mine could have done with another half a liter but I had no more space in the pot. I had a lot of meat. You decide how you like it.

7. And beef stock, 1 tin of tomatoes, herbs, salt and pepper.
8. Also add some cayenne pepper to spice it up a bit. Or as much as you like.
9. Oh I just remembered, I think I also added chili.

Simmer for as long as you have time!! I started mine at noon and cooked it for 6 hours. It's even better the next day so we had something else that night for dinner and left the soup for the next night. Before dinner I let it simmer for another hour to heat up.

Quick quiche

My mother-in-law sent me this recipe and I recently made it after I finally found a silicone muffin tray.

For the easiest quiche crust ever, flatten a slice of brown or white bread (crust on or off) by rolling it between two pieces of plastic wrap with a rolling pin (or empty wine bottle like I do if you don't have a rolling pin!). Butter both sides lightly and press into a muffin tin. I found that one slice was enough for two small quiche crusts.

Fry some onions and whatever else you would like to have as a filling, scoop into bread shell and break an egg over it.

I would beat the egg a little, mix it up, before pouring it over so it doesn't look like a fried egg on top if you're making a quiche. I made this for breakfast so then the fried-egg-look works.

Bake at 180 C for 15 min or until the egg is cooked. Carefully remove from the muffin tin

and serve on a plate decorated with balsamic reduction to make a smiley face. (Optional!)

As I said, I made this for a weekend breakfast so I fried some onion, bacon and mushroom to go on the crust and then topped each with an egg. Andre said they were good! I don't like egg too much, so maybe I'll try it next as a vegetable quiche.

Vegetable tart & stuffed peppers

After too many chocolates and dinners out these past few weeks we're now eating healthier (more veg) and no more chocs. The plan is to stick to this until Christmas. That's two months. Let's hope we make it!

So last night I made a vegetable tart. It was a combination between a quiche and an onion tart recipe which I got from my mom.

I cooked the spinach and fried some onion, garlic and bacon in a pan. Lined the dish with phyllo pastry, added the topping plus some feta and grated cheese and folded the pastry over.

I thought it might not be filling enough for Andre so I made stuffed peppers too. This recipe I got from a Spanish cookbook which we got as a gift from my dad and stepmom. It's got some great recipes in and I'm trying another one tonight.

Chop the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds.

I spooned some previously prepared mince in each. Topped with feta and grated cheese and replaced the pepper tops again.

Bake the tart and peppers for half an hour at 180 C.

Enjoy dinner and then ask your husband to do the dishes!

Zucchini Bread

I've read about Zucchini bread a while back, but the thought of zucchini in a bread just didn't sound right to me. But then I started thinking if we can put carrots in carrot cake then perhaps zucchini could work too.

When I looked at the sugar that goes into this bread it's obviously not a savoury one and I expected it might be something like a banana bread. It is, only better!

André thought it was some fancy Swiss recipe I was trying out. He did not see the ingredients. So I let him believe that because I knew he would also be quite a bit unsure about eating zucchini in a sweet bread, more like a cake. And I was right.

I managed to get a picture seconds before the last slice got eaten.

After he finished about four slices:

Me: Do you like this bread?

Andre: Yeah it's awesome!

Me: Is it better than banana bread? (He LOVES banana bread, it was his favourite, until now.)

Andre: Oh yes, this is way better!

Me: Do you know what it is?

Andre: No, what?

Me: Zucchini bread.

Andre: WHAT??? NO!!! Don't lie!!

Me: It is, see those green bits there? That's zucchini.

Andre: I used to hate zucchini when I was a kid.

So here's what you need to go do RIGHT now. Sift:

3 c flour

1 t salt

1 t baking soda

1 t baking powder

3 t cinnamon

Then in another bowl you need to beat:

3 eggs

1 c oil

2 c sugar (I used 1 c white and 1 c brown)

3 t vanilla

Then add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix well.

Add 3-4 c grated zucchini and stir it in. You might need to actually just use your hands and squish it in there to get it really mixed in with the dough. Go on, it feels good.

PS Don't squeeze out any water from the grated zucchini, you need the moisture in the bread.

Then put half the dough in a bread pan and bake 40-60 minutes at 165 C. Mine baked 55 minutes. You need to test to see if it's ready. Cool in the pan on a rack for 20 minutes. Then remove from the pan and cool completely.

Oh, then go ahead and bake the rest of the dough. It makes 2 loaves. You can also make individual zucchini muffins instead. I'm going to freeze one loaf.

Enjoy with a cup of tea on a Sunday afternoon!

PS The bread looks a bit pale on these pictures. I don't know what happened to the colour when I imported it here. But believe me, it looks better in real life!

Vanilla sugar

Vanilla essence comes in such small bottles here in Switzerland. In South Africa we got something a little different, a bigger bottle, dark colour and really good vanilla smell. All I've found here are these tiny tiny bottles of clear liquid.

So my mom advised me to use vanilla sugar instead. Here's how to make your own:

2-3 cups sugar with one vanilla pod. Slice the vanilla pod open lengthwise using the back of a knife. Not all the way through and leave the ends in tact. Scrape out the seeds and mix with the sugar. It will smell divine instantly! Leave the whole vanilla pod in the sugar. Keep your vanilla sugar in an air tight container and leave for 2 weeks. Then it will be ready to use in anything that needs some vanilla flavouring. It's apparently also good in tea and coffee. I'll have to wait 2 weeks, then I'll try that.

Mrs Mostert's chutney

If you're not from South Africa I might have to explain to you what Mrs Ball's is. It's a fruit chutney and the best chutney you will ever find in the whole wide world. Mrs Ball's chutney is part of being South African. It goes with any food. No South African home is complete without Mrs Ball's. If you're ever in South Africa, make sure you try it. Here's a picture so you know what you're looking for:

If you live in South Africa, you can skip ahead to another recipe, go bake some cookies or something because you don't need to make chutney. You can just go to Pick 'n Pay and buy bottles and bottles of the good stuff.

I don't live in South Africa anymore, you see. Now I know I can order it online, but I like a challenge in the kitchen and my empty Mrs Balls chutney bottle which my mom brought from SA was a good enough challenge to try and make my own.

Mrs Ball's recipe is known to be a secret recipe. Top Secret. So I didn't expect to find it on the internet when I googled it. What I did find was a Mrs Ball's facebook group. And I found my dad as a fan on this group! He loves chutney as much as I do. I think it's in the genes. I inherited it from him.

So having given up on finding the secret recipe I look around this group for fun, since I'm still a housewife with nothing to do some days. There I found a note. And in the note... was the recipe!! I couldn't believe it. I checked and checked again. I thought this must be a joke, somebody making up a recipe and posting it here. But then as someone wrote in the comments, they would still go out and buy their bottles of Mrs Ball's chutney. And I thought, yes, if I could I would also still buy the chutney instead of making it. I didn't expect my chutney to taste the same even with the same recipe.

And so this morning I made my first bottle of chutney.

The recipe says it makes 18 bottles. A little bit too much for me. So I divided it by 18 to make just one bottle. When I weighed out the fruit it was so little so I decided to double everything and make two bottles instead. Good thing I did, because in the end it did only make one bottle.

You can click here for the original 18 bottle recipe.

Or you can follow the reduced recipe with my own modifications and tips in brackets:

68 g dried peaches (I couldn't find peaches so I used dried mango instead. When I find dried peaches I will make it again.)

26 g dried apricots

- Soak overnight in 100 ml Brown Wine Vinegar. (I couldn't find brown wine vinegar so bought red wine vinegar. Is it the same?)

Next morning, cook the dried fruit in the vinegar in which it soaked until soft.

Drain and mince the fruit.

Add 270 g sugar and 56g onions, minced.

Add 12 g salt and 8 g cayenne pepper.

Add 200 ml brown wine vinegar and simmer 1 - 2 hours. (I did one hour)

At start of 1 hour:

At end of 1 hour:

Sterilize bottle and bottle and seal while still hot.

The chutney will thicken as it cools down. Mine is now a little bit too thick and sticky. Next time I will add more vinegar.

My first bottle of home made chutney! I tried it with some quiche for lunch. Tastes almost as good as the real thing!

Plum jam

I've made tomato jam a few years ago and now for my second try at making jam I used the plums (prunes?) I had bought which weren't being eaten fast enough.

The recipe I found said to use equal amounts of plums and sugar, but next time I'll use less sugar. I don't need it as sweet and would actually like to taste a bit of the sourness of the plums. If you click on the link to the recipe there are some other links on that site with more info about making jam that can be useful.

So here's what I did:

590 g plums

590 g sugar

110 ml water

Slice the plums in half and remove the pips.

Simmer in the water until nice and soft. Make sure you simmer long enough.

Do you like my red pot? I have two of them. I got them from my gran in Germany. They go with my other red kitchen things.

Have a plum while you wait.

Add the sugar and stir until dissolved. I know... so much SUGAR!

Bring to a boil and boil rapidly until the jam sets when tested.*

Remove the scum.

Pot and seal while still hot.

*Unfortunately I didn't time how long this took, but I had to boil it for quite a while. To test if it is ready, have a plate in the freezer so it gets nice and cold. Remove from freezer and place a drop of jam on the plate and leave for one minute. It should feel sticky when you touch it with your finger. If not, keep on boiling and test again and again!

Zwetschgenkuchen

I had some plums or prunes, I'm never sure which is which, the small ones, Zwetschgen in German. So I decided to use the Hungarian Tart recipe which I made before, but instead of the apricot jam I used Zwetschgen. Click here for the recipe for the dough. I didn't have vanilla so I added 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon. The cinnamon went really well with the prunes.

I pressed half the dough in a dish. This time I used a bigger dish and made the dough layer thinner which tasted much better.

Finely slice the prunes. Then I borrowed from another recipe my mom sent me for a similar fruit tart and sprinkled about a 1/4 cup sugar over the fruit and some more cinnamon. Her recipe also asks for 1 tablespoon lemon juice but I forgot about this.

Then grate the remaining dough over the top and bake at 170C for about 30 min.

Flapjacks for lunch

Flapjack is a name for two different sweet foods. In the UK and Australia, it refers to a tray-baked biscuit, and in Canada, the United States, and South Africa, it refers to a form of pancake. (Wikipedia)

I'm from South Africa so I made the pancake type version here for Sunday lunch.

Mix: 1 C flour

1 T sugar

2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

In a measuring jug mix: 1 C milk

1 egg

1 T oil

Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture.

Mix until just combined. It will still be lumpy.

Spoon some mixture into a non-stick pan. (Makes 8 if you make about the size I did.)

Fry until bubbles form on the top.

Flip over and fry the other side until golden brown.

I kept them warm here by placing some water in a pot on low heat. Place a plate on top with a lid over the plate.

Enjoy with syrup or honey. Or Nutella like André did.

Rösti - part two

After the previous unsuccessful attempt at flipping the rösti over André decided that it needs something to bind it better so it doesn't fall apart when you try to flip it. So the next morning we made rösti again for breakfast this time!

I beat two eggs and mixed in a little milk, salt and pepper and poured this over the fried rösti.

It was actually really good. While eating our brunch we came up with lots of other ideas of things to add to this breakfast rösti, like mushrooms and other diced vegetables.

Not sure what the Swiss will think of us re-inventing the rösti like this!

Rösti - part of a Swiss meal

I read in a survey here that the Swiss consider fondue to be the most typically swiss food and rösti got the second most votes.

So I made rösti!

Ok, not quite made it myself, but I cut the packet open and put it in the pan.

Then you leave it to fry in the pan until it starts going golden brown and crispy underneath.

THEN comes the tricky part. You need to flip it. Turn it over. Not really possible. This was about the 3rd time I made rösti and all the methods I've tried lands me with a little heap of grated potato (what rösti is in case you didn't know). I've tried placing a plate over the pan and turning it over. Tried using the lid. Tried doing it with a spatula. I have now decided to just scramble it around a bit and hope I get some of the 'unfried' bits at the bottom.

With our rösti the other night I made my own chicken mixture. Onion, garlic, red pepper, chili, tomato, mushroom and zuchinni cooked in a sauce made of mushroom soup powder mixed with milk and white wine. Turned out good!