"Ask the chef"

This is the page where we can speak each month – about questions you have, seasonal produce, new recipes we’re cooking, other activities – even a ‘meet the producer’ feature…

This month, I’m featuring home comforts for people with no spare kitchen time. Something hearty from my childhood, to warm us up on these cold nights. A reason to get mum’s old orange and brown ‘crock-pot’ out of the cupboard and let it do the work, while I do other things – like the ABC ‘Knit-In’ (See photos below of 'the knitting chef').

Beef braised in red wine – a French tradition, with explanations and shortcuts for those who want them or “L-plate cooks”.

Every culture has its slow cooking recipes – this is one simple one. You can add and change bits around to your own taste as you make it in the future – tomato, mushrooms and so on.

You can use cheaper cuts of meat, such as chuck or blade steak for this one; and the technique of braising – a good one for winter and for people with no kitchen time. Just cut the ingredients up and put everything into the slow cooker, turn it on and let it do its thing while you are at work. If you make the quantities below, you will also have leftovers for the freezer, for those nights you don’t want to cook at all. You do have to shop for the ingredients – but these days, you can even do that over the internet.

Ingredients:

To complete this recipe,

1. Chop the carrots, onions, leeks, parsley and chives and place in the slow cooker. Add bay leaf, parsley stalks and thyme.
2. Peel and crush the garlic, place with other veges.
3. Trim the meat and cut into cubes (roughly one inch or 2.5cm). (Or have your butcher do this for you).
4. Put flour onto a dinner plate [or into a paper bag], add good pinches of salt and pepper and mix. Coat the meat with the seasoned flour. The bag works really well and is less messy. Just shake the meat in the bag with the flour.
5. For ‘no kitchen time’ cooks: Put meat without browning into slow cooker with butter, tomato paste and wine.
6. For more flavour: Heat butter in frypan and brown the meat, then put meat in slow cooker. Add tomato paste to the fry pan and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring. Pour red wine into the pan and bring to the boil, stirring to collect crustiness from the bottom. (This is called deglazing and adds lots of flavour to your dish).

That’s it! Lid on, set to ‘lo’ for a long, long cook [all day] or ‘hi’ for 3-4 hours*.

Hints:

*This will also depend on the performance of your cooker. A long slow cook will have the food ready when you need it, for a faster ‘cook’, you need to check if 3-4 hours is enough. It may take a bit longer.

It does taste better if you brown the meat first. Listen to Maggie Beer talk about ‘caramelisation’ ….

Don’t open the lid for the first two hours. Slow cookers take a while to build up the heat – you don’t want to let it out.

Check that meat is tender. Towards the end of the cooking, lift the lid to evaporate some of the sauce if it is too thin for you.

In the meantime, what will I be doing while my dinner cooks? Have a look below:

When I’m not cooking, I’m usually finishing projects for one of my chosen organisations, ‘Wraps with Love’.

Yes, we volunteers knit wraps – and love it! Last year, 23,580 wraps were produced by volunteers in every state for cold and traumatised humanity. People caring about other people. It is estimated that each wrap takes 150 hours to make (I take longer, I’m a slow knitter… and busy cooking)

On August 1st, at the ABC studios in Ultimo, enormous numbers of us will flock to the studio from sparrows’ rising time for the 5th annual “Knit-In”. We hand in completed wraps and squares and knit/sew up wraps while breakfast and morning presenters Adam Spencer and Deb Cameron present their programs with us as studio audience.
 

Check out their website: www.artsandcraftsnsw.com.au/Wrap.htm or the ABC: type ‘ABC Sydney The Knit-In’ into your search engine and follow the links. And have comfort food to come home to…..

I look forward to your questions next month…

Regards,

A year of watching the stock simmer