SLOW COOKING BEEF STEW/BOLLY SAUCE

The fact of the matter is that you can cook any kind of red meat this way. The stewing beef need not be of any kind of quality as the fat tends to disintegrate during the cooking process, but if you are using minced beef it needs to have a low fat content since otherwise you will be skimming grease off the top forever! I have made this recipe with Wild Boar and with Venison chunks, both equally delicious.

It takes a long time to cook, but a little time to make since it more or less handles itself once it’s in the oven.

Another tip – always keep some stock at home as it adds pizzazz to everything. Cubes are OK, the Knorr jellified concentrates are great, but the best, of course, is of you have some homemade – much easier than you think to make (recipe to follow one of these days) and keep in the freezer. I keep game stock on the gogo, as well as beef and chicken stock. Fish,Lamb and Vegetable are of the jellified kind. And the great thing about making your own stock is that you can make your own consommé of it. I make a grouse consommé of old grouse that are too tough to eat, and serve it in winter at elevenses on our shoot with a dash of sherry.

I started adding the vegetables when my children decided they would no longer eat anything healthy. My motto is: If you can’t see it, it’s not there. And once I realised the flavour became richer with the vegetables in it, I never went back.

As to the herbs and spices involved, I use some for summer and others for winter. Seems to me that the winter recipe is more apt as soul food for cold nights, and the summer more fragrant. Also, the fresh herbs are harder and more expensive to find in summer, so the dried herbs/spices are cheaper and easier at that time.


Ingredients:
Olive Oil
Pancetta Cubes or bacon bits, rich in fat
Chopped garlic
Chopped Onion
Finely Chopped Carrots
Finely Chopped Celery
Optional - mushrooms - any kind, in bite sized chunks
Chunks of Stewing Beef, or Boar, or Venison, or Lean Minced Beef
Masses of red wine (this tenderises the meat and gives it oomph)
Tomato Passata or tinned chopped tomatoes
Lots of Stock
Winter spices: A few Juniper berries, 2 bay leaves, 1 or 2 cinnamon sticks (yes, cinnamon – it is delicious with red meat!)
Summer herbs: Handful of chopped Origano, Marjoram, Flat leaf Parsley, Thyme

How to:
- Heat oven to 140 Celsius
- In an over proof pot that has a loose fitting lid to go with it (you need to allow the evaporation process to reduce the sauce) – and it needs to be the biggest you have:
- Heat the olive oil and crisp up the pancetta/bacon bits. It is important that the fat on the bacon gets colour, as otherwise the fat will remain once it is finished.
- Lower the heat and sweat the garlic and onion in it until soft and see through (you must not cook garlic over too high a heat or it ill burn and not taste at all good)
- Optional: Raise the heat and add the mushrooms and let fry until the liquid has evaporated from them (otherwise they boil and there's nothing yuckier than boiled mushrooms)
- Lower the heat and add your chopped carrots and celery and sweat for a few minutes.
- Raise the heat to full and seal the meat adding little by little and stirring it around so every piece gets a chance of a bit of heat. It’s important that they not ‘boil’ in these initial stages, but rather that they fry in the pan in order to seal it.
- Once the meat is brown, add the winter/summer herbs/spices and stir around.
- Pour over the wine. I use about half a bottle for two pounds of meat.
- Let it bubble and reduce for about ten minutes before adding the passata. I use about half a litre of passata/two tins of chopped tomatoes for two pounds of meat. Stir again.
- Back to the bubbling and reducing, for about half an hour on the stove. Stir every now and then.
- Now add the stock, I use one litre for two pounds of meat, and stir.
- There's going to be a whole lot of liquid, which will evaporate when you now put it in the oven. Leave it there for about five hours, stirring every now and then and checking that the liquid has not all gone, in which case you just add more stock.
- The finished stew should just simmer in a light sauce, covering but not swamping the meat.
- If it is the winter recipe you're doing, you need to remove the cinnamon stick, the bay leaves and, more finicky, as many of the juniper berries as you can find.
- I serve with mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables, or in the case of a bolognaise, a nice batch of spaghetti cooked al dente.