Jamie's Beef and Ale Stew

As I mentioned in my previous post, Hubby and I are currently up to our necks in moving and setting up home in our new house.  As I've only lived in apartments since leaving home over ten years ago, having an entire house and yard at our disposal seems both a little overwhelming, and incredibly decadent.

On Wednesday last week, I waved Hubby goodbye in the morning and worked from home while waiting on a furniture delivery.  As he left for work, I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to cook anything out of the ordinary (read, easy stir fry most likely) for dinner however within a couple of hours my sister had emailed a recipe through to me that had me ready to get out the chopping board and fire up the stove top.

My sister is a huge Jamie Oliver fan, and had stumbled across Jamie's Beef and Ale Stew in his Ministry for Food cookbook.  After a quick read through the recipe, I realised that I had EVERYTHING I NEEDED to make this recipe right now, with the exception of the Ale... or Guinness... or Stout that you need.  So once my beautiful new tall boy was delivered, I reasoned that even though working from home, I still deserved a lunch break and nipped to my nearest liquor store.

This recipe is INCREDIBLY simple to make.  The only thing you need is plenty of time to just let it sit on the stove (mine sat simmering for three and a half hours).  It's taken me serious time to get over my 'oh this is too hard' attitude to cooking things that need hours and hours - and now that I've made that logical jump to 'it may need hours, but I don't have to actually DO anything to it for those hours' I feel much happier.

Step one is to cut up the veges you need for the stew - because I didn't have quite enough meat, I supplemented with extra carrot, celery and mushrooms (more on the rooms later).  You need at least two stalks of the celery, 2 medium onions and 2 carrots, all roughly chopped.  You throw these into a casserole dish on a medium heat on your stove top with a good load of olive oil (Jamie says 'two lugs') along with three bay leaves and let it cook for ten minutes.

After ten minutes, add 500g of diced beef (the cheaper the cut the better), a tablespoon of plain flour, a can of diced tomatoes and then 500ml of Guinness, Ale of Stout.  Give it all a good stir, then bring it to the boil, pop the lid on and simmer if for three hours.

After three hours, I took the lid off the pot, threw in a big handful of mushrooms (my personal tweak), a slug of Worcester sauce and some diced garlic (my sister's idea) and then left it with the lid off for half an hour or so.

We ate it pretty simply - straight in a bowl, with lots of crusty bread slathered with butter.  I was really pleased with it for lots of reasons.  The meat just fell apart the way it should, the veges were soft and fabulous and the mushrooms had soaked up plenty of sauce.  Plus, for minimal effort, I felt like supreme domestic goddess.

When I make this again (and I think I will), I will definitely make a few changes.  Firstly, it was a bit too bland for us.  I still think a little bit of chilli powder to give it a bit of warm would be a good idea.  I also think I should have put in more garlic.  The mushrooms were a definite win.... but I also think throwing in a handful of new potatoes would be brilliant.  But other than that, it was super easy to make, used ingredients we generally have in the house and was great comfort food.  Plus the leftovers made a fab lunch the next day.