Belgian beef and beer (Vlaamse Stoverij)

A delicious, warming stew served with chips and salad

I adore Belgium; I just can't get enough of the place. Is it the beautiful-sounding guttural Flemish language which, frustratingly, I can understand in its written form but speak so comically badly? Perhaps. Is it those picturesque cloudy landscapes, the windswept sand dunes and Gothic architecture? Maybe. The cultured, polite and well-mannered people? Probably.  Is it anything to do with chocolate and beer? Well...

This delicious beef stew is at its best when made a couple of days beforehand, since it improves greatly with age.  Shin of beef needs to be cooked long and slowly, and it will melt in the mouth cooked in this thick, unctuous and plentiful sauce made from dark beer. But best of all, the Belgians like to eat it with chips and salad, rather than serving it with boiled cabbage and mashed potato like we would in Britain. Vive la difference, I say. Those Belgians are way ahead.

Ingredients – serves four

• 2 bottle dark Belgian beer – Leffe is ideal but actually I prefer Brugse Zot, a rich brew from Brugge
• Three large onions, sliced thinly
• 1.5kg stewing beef – shin or chuck steak are ideal – sliced into cubes
• 50g butter
• A couple of tablespoons of plain flour
• A teaspoon of mustard
• A splash of cider vinegar
• 4 teaspoons of sugar
• Fresh thyme and a couple of bay leaves
• Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large cooking pot and add the onions. Cook over a low heat, stirring regularly until the onions turn a deep golden colour before adding the beef. Season well with salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Stir continuously to brown the beef evenly.

When the beef has browned to your satisfaction, add the flour and continue cooking for a few minutes, stirring all the time to avoid lumps. Add the beer, followed by the sugar, vinegar, mustard and herbs and stir well to loosen up any lumps of flour or beef which may have stuck to the base of the pan.

Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, as gently as you can for four hours, stirring occasionally.

After four hours, remove from the heat and leave to rest for a minimum of twelve hours, but an extra day or two will allow the flavour to develop.

When ready to serve, reheat until piping hot and serve with dressed salad and plenty of chips.

Hot cross bun bread pudding

Some bread pudding, yesterday

If you bought too many hot cross buns at Easter, don’t throw them away – freeze them and save your stale bread to make a tasty bread pudding, crusty on top and soft and moist in the middle. Makes bleeding tons.

Ingredients

• 8 stale hot cross buns. For every bun you haven’t got, substitute two slices of stale bread. You could, of course, just use 16 slices of bread and make a plain old bread pudding.
• 400 ml milk
• Fresh satsuma or tangerine peel, cut into small diced pieces
• Grated lemon peel
• 100g currants
• 2 Earl Grey tea bags
• Fresh or candied ginger, finely chopped
• Powdered cloves
• Powdered cinnamon
• Powdered or fresh nutmeg
• 100g brown sugar
• 1 egg

Method

Into a bowl, tear the buns/bread up into small pieces.  Pour over three-quarters of the milk and knead the mixture with your hands, while trying to soak up as much milk into the bread as you can. Add the rest of the milk as required until the bread is thoroughly soaked with milk and leave for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, put the kettle on and brew up a big cup of Earl Grey with both bags, but don’t add any milk. Instead pour the currants into the tea. Yes, I’m serious - the currants will swell up and take on the delicate floral aroma of the Earl Grey.

Once the bread has finished soaking, take handfuls and squeeze with your fingers to remove any surplus milk. Add as much ginger as you like (less if using fresh) with both the orange and lemon peel. If you can’t get tangerines or satsumas, grate the rind from the outside of an orange but take care not to add any of the bitter pith underneath.  Add two teaspoons each of the cloves and cinnamon and half a spoonful of nutmeg (or less if using fresh.) Pour in the sugar and egg and mix all the ingredients well.  Finally, remove the teabags from the cup and drain off the raisins well before mixing into the pudding mixture.

Pre-heat an oven to 190C and leave the mixture to stand for 15 minutes before pouring it into small loaf tins. Using small tins means you can easily freeze portions of uneaten bread pudding. Sprinkle the tops with sugar before baking in the oven for an hour. Check the puddings regularly by plunging a clean knife into one and removing it immediately. If any wet pudding mixture clings to the knife then you may wish to bake it for a further fifteen minutes before testing again.

Turn the puddings out onto a cooling rack and dust the crusty tops with more sugar. 

Tip: If you store your bread pudding in a paper bag rather than a plastic one, it will last longer – bread pudding stored in a plastic bag tends to ‘sweat’ after a few days.

Serve hot with custard, or cold with a cup of strong tea and a roaring fire.