ohhhh its cold outside…..

When i first came up with the idea of this blog I didn’t expect the support I got so thank you for helping this to get going.

Now down to business.

At this time of year, its cold outside and the weather is a bit dull. So the best type of meals that people like to eat and warm, hearty meals. One of my favourites is a nice beef stew and dumplings, and it is one of the easiest things to make that can easily go wrong too.

the ingredients you need:

• 1 KG Diced Beef
• 2 Whole Onions
• 3 Carrots Diced
• 3 Diced Potatoes
• 1 Diced Swede
• 1 Sliced Leek
• 1 Clove of Crushed Garlic
• 1 Bottle of Red Wine
• 1 Beef Stock Cube
• 1 Litre of water
• Rosemary and Thyme
• A little Gravy browning (something like bisto)
• Seasoning – a bit of Salt and Pepper

This recipe is very much a chuck it in the pot and just leave it to slowly cook away. It takes roughly 3 hours and will serve 4 people

1.  Place a pan on the stove and pour a tablespoon of oil in. Chuck in the diced beef and allow to brown off. Once the meat has been browned, add in the bottle of Red Wine and allow to reduce.
2.  Add in the Carrots, Onions , Leeks, Swede, Crushed Garlic and diced Potatoes. Cook off the veg until it is slightly soft.Dont worry too much about the Carrots, Swede and Potatoes as these will soften up during the cooking process. Mix the Beef Stock Cube in with the Litre of water and pour over the stew mix.
3. Turn the heat down, and allow the stew to simmer and chuck in a couple of springs of Rosemary and Thyme. You can strip these of the stem if you want or pull them out at the end. This will give it a nice warming flavour at the end. Place a lid on the pan with enough space just to allow some air out as it slowly ticks over.
4. At this point best thing to do, is to put the kettle on and make a brew, completely your own choice. Every 30 minutes stir the stew just to keep it loose.
5. Add a little bit of the gravy browning to thicken up the juices in the pan and season to taste.

To make the dumplings you need the following ingredients

• 125g of plain flour and a little extra to help roll the dumplings
• 60g of suet
• a jug of water

1. sift the flour into a bowl and add in the suet
2. slowly pour in water into the mix and get your hands in and mix up to make a nice doughy mixture
3. With floured hands roll small balls. You should be able to get 8 dumplings out of this mix. Place each dumpling into the stew once it has been thickened up.
4. Place the lid on the pan and allow the dumplings to soak up some of the lovely flavours of the stew.
5. It should take about 30 minutes for the dumplings to become nice and fluffy.Turn the dumplings over after about 15 minutes in the pan.

After cooking all this for 3 hours, it’s all ready to serve and is perfect for those wintry days.

We all have those days when we get in from work, we look in the fridge and go “ahhh damn it, not got much in today.” Well don’t be so sure there sometimes there’s a hidden meal you can’t see.

Some of the basic things that i always have in the fridge always seem to be ham, cream,mushrooms, an onion and some cheddar cheese. Doesnt sound like much of a meal but there is a nice simple 15 minute meal all in there.

Most people will always have some form of pasta laying about.Heres what i suggest…….

1. Place 2 pan on the stove. Fill one up with water a tablespoon of oil and a pinch of Salt. in the other pan place a spoonful of butter and allow to melt.
2. While the pan of water boils, slice the mushrooms, dice the onion and chuck into the pan with the melted butter. As these bits begin to sweat off , the mushrooms will get darker.Once they turn a nice darkish grey/brown colour.Slice up the ham.
3. At this point the water should be boiling.Chuck in the pasta and add the ham to the mushrooms and onions. Allow to soak some of the onions and mushroom flavour up and add in the cream. Grate some cheese.
4. It will take about 8-10 minutes for the pasta to cook and about the same time for the cream to reduce and thicken up. Once the pasta is cooked, drain and put to one side.Now chuck in the cheese into the sauce and season with salt and pepper.Add in the pasta and allow the sauce to binding it all together.

This is a nice, quick and easy meal and its cheap to make as well

These recipes are just a little taster as to what is to come.If you have any questions or any recipes that you would like to see you can contact me at:

@acookslife1986 – on twitter

acookslife1986@gmail.com

Just before i go, this horsemeat scandal…..Well its all a bit of a mess.The supermarkets aren’t sure where there meat has come from and neither are big companies like birds eye. Unfortunately in the last few days, even reliable Birds Eye have also become victims of those pesky brown envelope pushers and have also found horsemeat in their products.

This comes back to another reason why i want to bring cooking back to the home. If big companies are not sure what goes into their own products, then it’s definitely a piece of mind if your making it at home from scratch.

The bonus of making things at home from scratch, is that you know everything that is going into your food. No E numbers or additives, or excess sugar or fats.

My tip is, if you can use your local butcher to buy meat, or even a local farmers market,do it.The food will be fresher and there’s always one about on a saturday somewhere near you. They will know a lot more about where your food has come from and it will also be a lot fresher than food you find a supermarket, mainly because supermarkets stock has done a lot of milage to get to the shelf.

Thank you once again for taking the time to read this blog and don’t be afraid to get in contact.