The 1st Time.

Apart from having monthly subscriptions to Australian Good Food magazine Australian Good Taste to assist us with our meal planning I also have a small but expanding cookbook collection.   I often receive them as gifts and love to sit down on the couch to read them and gather inspiration and think ahead to what I would love to cook.   

Last Christmas my in-laws gave me a copy of the ‘Barefoot Contessa’ back to basics by American Ina Garten.  I must admit that I have been scared to cook from it.  Ina uses some produce and products that I not that familiar with and uses imperial measurements.   But I loved how she uses good quality ingredients and cooks beautiful simple food.

So I set myself a challenge every month I am going to cook a recipe from one of my cookbooks that I have never cooked before.  And you never know I could discover our new family favorite dish in the process.

The other night we cooked Parkers Stew from Ina’s lovely book.  We varied it slightly as we didn’t have a bottle of Cab Sav and I really really dislike green peas, so no peas for us.   We marinated a kilo of Chuck Steak with a whole 750ml bottle of Merlo with 3 Bay leaves from the garden and 3 cloves of garlic overnight.

Next day strained liquid, picked out the garlic and reserved it and the liquid it to cook with later on.  We got out a large casserole pot borrowed 200g of Bacon (removed from pot) and than the beef that had been lightly coated with a flour/salt and pepper mix.

We set the browned meat aside and threw in 2 diced onions and chopped the reserved garlic and 3 carrots and 6 baby chat potatoes and stir it all around a bit. 

The best bit was to add 2 cups of the reserved liquid, about 2 cups of beef stock, your browned beef and bacon, a small bunch of fresh rosemary, 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce and ½ a cup of Sun dried tomatoes (drained, sliced and added to the vegetables) and give it a stir and pop it in the oven on 160 - 180 degree's for 2 hours.   

Two hours later we had a beautiful smelling, meat falling apart stew to eat.    This recipe make a ton, so we more had than enough to eat the next day (we thought it actually tasted better) or you could even freeze the rest for another meal later down the track. 

All in all not a bad recipe for these cold winter months.