Powered By Blogger

Sunday 11 December 2011

Braised Beef Cheeks, 'Bellingham' blue cheese Mash

You
Recipes come from?
Fireside stories.
The flavours in this beef dish are inspired by one of my uncles who told of his cattle's strange behaviour one autumn many moon's ago.
Whilst bringing in the cows for milking  they had a stagger about them and their reactions were dopey things didn't  look right at all, in all his years he hadn't seen the like of it.Without any further ado the vet was called. The symptoms relayed, he too was puzzled, there was no obvious answer to his knowledge either.The vet arrived straight away and they walked the field where they duly deduced the cattle had been eating the windfalls from some hedgerow apple and plum trees.The case of strange behaviour was closed, the ripe and fermenting fruit + a ruminants four part stomach = a microbrewery on legs, simple enough the cattle got a little tipsey.
thanks uncle Bernie

This dish is for slow cooking, takes about 4hrs in total but is worth the wait, you can do it in the morning or day before as it reheats well.
Ingredients.
4 Pieces of beef shin or 2 Beef cheeks trimmed and cut in half..
1/2 Btl of Dry red wine
1/2 ltr of  fresh pressed Apple juice
 6 Plums
2 Apples cut in quarters
 2 sticks Celery chopped rough
 2 large Carrots.peeled and cut into quarters
 1 medium Onion chopped skin on
Garlic 5 cloves
1/2 red chilli
1Bay leaf
 2 sprigs of Thyme
12 Black peppercorns
50ml Rapeseed Oil for frying
2 tbspns cornflour.
 Pinch of Salt.
1kg potatoes for mashing(roosters)
150gms Bellingham blue cheese or your local blue.
salt&pepper
grated nutmeg
50gms butter
100 ml milk

Method for braising the beef.
Seal the your chosen beef in a hot pan browning well, place the beef in a casserole dish or deep sided oven pan.
Fry the veg in the pan you used for the beef on a medium heat you want to brown them as this will add to the colour of your sauce, then place in the casserole with the beef.
Boil the wine in the pan to cook off the alcohol, add to the beef.
add the apple juice and the rest of the ingredients.
put the lid on  or cover tightly with tinfoil and cook in an oven for approx 2 1/2 hrs until the meat is tender.
to finish.
Remove the beef and carrots, strain the liquid stock into a suitable pot,discard the rest of the vegetables. Skim of any fat from the stock bring to the boil reduce the heat to simmer skimming as necessary. You want to reduce the stock to concentrate the flavours and itensify the colour- creating your sauce, taste as you go, it should be slighty sweet with acidity from the wine. use a little cornflour diluted in water to thicken your sauce.Place the beef and carrots back into the sauce to reheat.

 'Bellingham' blue cheese Mash
Make a  potato mash as you normally would (potatoes peeled &quartered, boiled 20-25 mins drained and mashed seasoned with salt&pepper, a pinch of nutmeg, a good nob of butter and a dribble of milk).
 break  the cheese into small chunks and stir lightly into the mash keeping the pieces intact just before serving. When eating you'll get a rich hit of salty farmyard tang every now and then that contrast with sweetness and heat of the beef and sauce..

I like to eat this with some chilli slices that have been cooked in sugar syrup for that little extra bit of heat.



.
I

No comments:

Post a Comment