Slow, moist, methods of cooking turn out delicious family meals.
Slow, moist, methods of cooking turn out delicious family meals.
Are you back at work now, and juggling work and home? If so, it doesn't mean you have to eat canned and frozen meals, expensive steaks or chops, or takeaways every night.
The secret is to plan your meals and prepare parts of them ahead of time. Tomorrow's dinner can be cooking while you watch TV. Stew or curry tastes better, somehow, reheated. A carefully roasted piece of meat retains its juices if chilled before cutting (and you can cut thinner slices!)
Wash, and dry, vegetables and leave in containers in the fridge, ready to use. Cauliflower and broccoli can be separated into florets. It will keep for several days in an air-tight container in a cold part of the fridge. Sometimes it pays to think of cooking for more than one meal at once.
Beef stew served with crusty bread.
Extra cooked cauli can be turned into cauliflower cheese the next day, cooked rice into fried rice, cooked waxy potatoes into potato salad or sauted potatoes. You can make a pie from left over stew ... you get the idea. Think of leftovers as a resource, but use them before they're only fit for the compost bin.
The parts of the animal which have worked the hardest are often less expensive, but tough. They are usually lean and full of flavour, but have to be cooked really carefully. Slow, moist, methods of cooking turn them into delicious family meals. If you're cooking chicken, fry the onion until it is golden, not brown, and don't brown the chicken at all.
BASIC CASSEROLES OR STEWS (6 servings)
Ingredients About 750g meat - more if it is a bony cut (you need 125g raw meat per person) 1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped 3 medium onions, peeled and finely chopped 2-3 carrots peeled and diced 1-2 Tbsp fat or oil 2 Tbsp plain flour, mixed with a little salt and pepper stock or water to cover the meat - about 600ml
Method Cut the meat into neat pieces about 2.5-5cm size. Roll in seasoned flour.
Heat the fat in a heavy based pan, and brown the onions gently, before adding the garlic. Remove from the pan and brown the meat on all sides.
For a stew, place the meat and onions in a saucepan, for a casserole, put it in a casserole dish.
Leftover cauliflower can be made into cauliflower cheese.
Add all the other ingredients. Cover with a lid. Cook the casserole in a 170C oven. If you're cooking a stew, bring it to the boil on the stove-top, then reduce the heat so that bubbles are only just breaking the surface of the liquid. Cook until the meat is tender - about 1 1/2-2 hours. Adjust the seasoning and thicken the liquid if it needs it with a thin mix of flour and water. Cook for 5-10 minutes more. Serve right away with vegetables and potatoes, or cool, then chill or freeze for another day. This is a dish that's worth doubling to save time and electricity.
BRAISED MEAT
These dishes are made from larger steak-sized pieces of meat in the same way, but with a little less liquid. At the end of cooking, the meat is removed and kept hot,, and the liquid is reduced to a syrupy consistency, by boiling it.
Cook extra potatoes for potato salad the next day.
POT ROAST
As for braising, but uses whole cuts of meat. An excellent way to cook those stringy roasts that butchers sometimes cobble together.
Variations: BOEUF BOURGUIGNONNE: In a beef stew, replace 1/4 of the water with red wine, and use about 12 baby onions or shallots instead of chopped onions, if you can get them. Cook about a cup of small mushrooms in a little butter and add them 10 minutes before the end of cooking. Serve, sprinkled with chopped parsley.
BEEF CARBONNARDE: Replace the liquid in a beef casserole with 300ml water and 300ml beer (flat beer is fine). Make sure there is not too much liquid. Spread some slices of bread thickly with mustard, and cut into quarters, or use 6mm slices of stale french bread.
Slow, moist, methods of cooking turn out delicious family meals.
When the meat is tender, adjust the seasoning, then put the pieces of bread on top and push them down below the surface, so that they get soaked with fat and gravy. It will float to the top. Remove the lid, and bake for a further 15-20 minutes until the bread is a good brown. The mustard seems to lose most of its heat, and, for my family at least, there is seldom enough of the bread to meet demand. The beer gives a nutty flavour to the dish.
CURRY: Add curry paste, curry powder, or your own mix of spices to the onions when browning them for a stew. Replace some of the water with coconut milk, or use coconut milk powder. Add extra garlic if you like it, and chutney or a suitable jam (apple jelly, plum or apricot jam are all good). A handful of sultanas is good too. Experiment to find out what you like best.
LEGUMES: Add canned beans or lentils to your stews for extra protein or to stretch the meat budget.
