Homemade beef stew with love...♥

Normally we spend Sundays exploring new places, trying out new food or hanging out for a few hours at the tea house. But yesterday, we had a tough mission which was trailing 14 km at MacRitchie in 2.30 hr (sometimes I wonder HOW I did that!), and hunting for my new coat which turned out to be my “new coats” (Plural!). We ended the day by shopping 3 full bags worth of groceries at Paragon. So today we decided to stay home and veg out, trying to slow the pace of our life as much as possible since the past week was like rollercoaster for both of us.

After our lunch at the nearby hawkers’ center, we spent the afternoon cooking ‘Beef Stew’ while listening to the latest album from Maroon 5.

Ingredients

Me, the helper, chopped 5 celeries, 5 carrots (into 2 size; small dice and big chunk), 2 onions (enough to make me cry), and 1 pack of baby Portobello mushrooms.

While the boo, the big chef, coated 600 g. of grain fed beef cubes with flour, seared in normal olive oil and set them aside to rest.

 

Fried all the veg that I chopped with bacon bits and extra knob of butter, added 1 small can of double concentrate Italian tomato paste, dropped in a bunch of Bouquet Garni, few Bay Leaves, a glass of red wine, and half a litre of beef stock. We flavored the mix with plenty of Worcestershire sauce and ground black peppers.

a small muslin bag of Bouquet Garni

into the casserole dish

The whole package was heated until simmering then put in casserole dish with the beef that we had originally set aside and thrown into the oven for 3 hrs at around 180 Celsius. We checked our package every 45 minutes to make sure that it is treated with the tender loving care.

We had such a happy dinner together. We had our stew with an Asian touch by spooning it over hot jasmine rice. The stew was absolutely yummy. Beef cubes were falling apart and melt in the mouth, the taste was soooo good, just like the way proper stew should be.

The winter wind is coming. It’s the first winter for us in Singapore. Hope that it will bring lots of happiness, joy, laughter and encourage me to do more work at the same time. Hahaha!