Drunken Stew(ie)!
Ummmm, ya, sooooooo. Don’t look at the date of this post. Just pretend it is two or three weeks ago and I am not as delinquent as I am with this one. I really don’t know what happened. It isn’t like I have been so busy that I haven’t been able to take some time to write something. I guess I just haven’t been inspired to write anything. Well that isn’t true either as I have frequently said to myself recently that I should share something with my (small) audience and just haven’t. Hopefully today’s posting will inspire me to write some more in the next few days. Maybe soon you will be telling me to shut the hell up and stop flooding your Facebook feed with yet another blog post – we can only hope!
Like I said, it’s not like I have nothing going on here. Hell, since my last post I have gotten everything setup after passing my mortgage industry exam, including getting my first ever business cards – damn I am handsome on 14pt cardboard stock! Then last week as awesome! Seriously kick-ass Jay-Z concert on Sunday with N.E.R.D., Wale and J.Cole, Sens game on Thursday as they beat the Lightning in overtime, followed up with go-karting at Top Karting for work on Friday, where we took 1st place among 10 mortgage brokerages in Ottawa. 4 hours of free karting, beer and food – almost heaven!
Now to explain the title of this post. I used to cook a lot of the meals in the house, but now that I am back in Canada and not on my own I really haven’t put much effort into it. Surprisingly, at least to me, I miss the cooking quite a bit. The other week I found a site called www.tastespotting.com – my sister calls it foodie porn, and I agree – don’t visit the site if you are at all hungry. While browsing all the recipes I came across one that piqued my interest – Pumpkin Guinness Stew. Ummm, did you say Guinness? I am in! Anyways, I used the recipe as a guideline but I made some changes as I went along to get it to the consistency I wanted, to double the recipe and to use the slow cooker. All in all it was a success with just a few minor adjustments needed – less cloves and no allspice. Also I added some brown gravy mix and flour to thicken it as I like a thicker stew, but that is a personal choice and if you like a more watery stew then ignore that. So, here is my version of the recipe with my adjustments already included. This is my first time writing a recipe and so please forgive me if it ain’t like the pros.
700-800g of stewing beef
750ml Guinness Beer (any stout beer will do)
1.5 cups of water
1/2 a pumpkin (I used a 7lb cooking pumpkin)
4 onions (a little smaller than baseball sized)
4 potatoes (baseball sized)
4-5 large carrots (300-400g)
3 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons gravy mix (I used Bistro)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
6-7 cloves
4 bay leaves
2 cinnamon sticks
salt
pepper
flour
1. Cut the beef in chunks of about 2 cm and put salt and pepper on them. Melt the butter in a pan that is large enough to hold all the meat, onions and beer. Once the butter stops foaming add the meat and cook for about 8-10 minutes on medium high till it is browned.
2. Cut up 3 onions in rough pieces and add them to the meat. Bake for another 5 minutes until tender and then add the beer. Bring to a boil for 5-10 minutes.
3. Cut the remaining onion in half and stick the cloves into each half and place them at the bottom of a 6qt slow cooker. Transfer the meat and beer mixture from the pan to the slow cooker and add the nutmeg, brown sugar, bay leaves and cinnamon sticks. Salt and pepper to taste.
4. Cut the potatoes into cubes, slice the carrots and then add to slow cooker. Mix the gravy powder with 1.5 cups of water and then add to slow cooker until all ingredients are covered with liquid. Cook on high for 3 hours.
5. Cut pumpkin into cubes the same as potatoes and add to slow cooker. Add flour to liquid to thicken. I used about 2 tablespoons but it will depend on the conistency you want. Continue to cook on high for 2 hours – meat should be falling apart and pumpkin and potatoes well done.
This thing only required 1/2 of the pumpkin I had and so I have pureed it and plan on making a Thai Red Curry Pumpkin soup with it. I will report back with the result of that recipe as well. Also, I think I want to try to find some other recipes that use Guinness in them – seems like a versatile elixir, not like I didn’t know that already! Hmmmmm, this post was rather bland and un-funny, but hopefully provided a delicious stew in the end.
See you next time – same bat time, same bat channel.
