When I make up a new yeast I save the litre or so of beer that I pour off the top and make the recipe below and I find I need to add a couple or three grams of hops
"Stoofvlees" (Belgian beer beef stew)
This is a typical Belgian dish, made with lots of beer. I used Leffe
Brune (the brown version, not the Blonde one) in Zrich, traditionally
it is made with Rodenbach, but any brown (Belgian) beer will do. It's
actually pretty easy to make, it just has to be on the fire for a while.
INGREDIENTS (serves 8 persons)
* 1.5 kg beef: what we call 'carbonnades', not steak or entrecte,
but lean stew beef will do, cut into 3 cm pieces (you can actually buy
it like that at Migros or Coop)
* 6 big onions
* 1 l of brown Belgian beer (Leffe Brune, Rodenbach, ...)
* 100 g of butter
* 3 tablespoons of good mustard
* 3 big slices of old bread
* thyme, some bay leaves
PREPARATION
Take a thick-bottomed pan. Prepare the slices of bread by smearing them
with the mustard.
On a high heat, quickly brown all sides of the meat pieces in hot
butter. Remove them, while preserving the butter and juices. Then, turn
down the heat, and slowly brown the onions until they are completely soft.
Put the meat back into the pan, stir in the thyme and cook for some
seconds (maybe add a tiny bit of salt and pepper). Now, pour in all the
beer, put in the bay leaves and put the slices of bread on top. Cover
the pan and let it simmer on a low heat for at least 1.5 hours, or until
the meat is very tender.
Be careful not to let it burn, you can always add some water if all the
moist is gone before the meat is ready. Also add water if the taste from
the beer made it too bitter. In the end, the bread should have
disintegrated (after one hour you can stir the bread and mustard into
the meat mixture).
If there's still too much moisture when the meat is completely tender,
use some maizena to 'bind' the sauce.
Remember, don't stir too much, because then you will have some kind of
'puree' in stead of meat chunks ;-)
Serve with belgian fries and a nice beer.
