Even though my camera is increasingly annoying me with its limits, and meat is less on my menu, I vowed this summer to practise a few solid meat dishes in preparation for autumn and winter. It takes windy days at the end of August, clear heralds of the changing season, to finally come through with this promise.
“Grandma’s favorite” was the title of a few rabbit recipes of top chef Peter Goossens in my weekend daily of last February. I decided to follow this procedure for beef stew - my brother’s specialty.
The original recipe is rabbit stew with cherry beer; I prepared beef stew with blonde beer, pilsener.
Here’s the original procedure, courtesy of the Hof van Cleve chef.
1 rabbit in pieces
butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 sprig of thyme
2 bay leaves
4 cloves of garlic
1 l of brown stock (bruine fond)
5 dl of cherry beer
Finishing:
20 silver onions, glazed in butter with stock
10 champignons de Paris (white mushrooms), fried in butter
For this recipe you need two stewers.
Color the rabbit pieces in butter in stewer number one.
Fry onion, garlic, and carrot with thyme and bay leaves in stewer number two. When soft, add them to the rabbit in stewer number one, and pour over the fond and the beer.
Let stew for one hour with the lid on. If needed, add more water.
Right before serving, add onions and mushrooms, and make sure everything is evenly hot.
Notes:
-I used about 800 g of beef stew and let this stew over medium to low heat for an hour. The meat was a bit chewy, but some pieces were softer. When consulting my brother about cooking times, he told me that browning the pieces in step one is the absolute key to a succesful beef stew. They need to be evenly browned, and long enough.
-I skipped the onions and mushrooms, and had lentils, and parsley for garnish.
-I did not have brown stock, I used 5 dl of Budels, an organic Dutch beer, which is not sweet and does not contain sugar. Ha!
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