Get in my belly!

Ok, I'm no professional when it comes to cooking, but my family pretty much revolves around food - food to celebrate occasions, food to cheer people up, food to make illness go away... you get the idea. I'm currently mid-way through slow-cooking the most gorgeous beef stew and I thought I'd share the recipe (it's so easy, it's almost fraud to call it "cooking")...

4 medium carrots, peeled, cut into rounds about 1.5cm thick
1 parsnip, peeled, cut into rounds about 1.5cm thick
1 swede, peeled, cubed (about 2cm)
2 medium onions, sliced about 5mm wide
Beef (can be a pretty cheap cut), as much as you fancy, cubed (about 1.5 cm)
2 pints of beef stock (2 x Oxo cubes will do, with 2 pints of hot water)
1 tablespoon of Marmite (oh yeah)
1 teaspoon mixed dried herbs
1 good slug of nice red wine
2 bay leaves
3/4 cup of flour
Salt, pepper and a little oil

It looks like a lot of ingredients but I bought beef for £3.40 and all the veg in a bag in the Co-op for £1. Everything else is store cupboard stuff and the wine was already open ;-)

1. Pre-heat the slow cooker.
2. Put the flour in a bowl and add salt and pepper. Add the cubes of beef and toss them around until they're coated in flour.
3. Fry the beef in a pan with a little oil until it's started to go brown. Don't push it around the pan, just turn it gently so the flour stays on the beef. You should still have some flour left in the bowl after you've tossed the beef around.
4. Take the beef out of the pan and put it in the slow cooker.
5. Put the onion in the pan that you've fried the beef in. Sweat it down until the onion has gone clear. Add the remaining flour and continue to fry until it starts to look a sticky mess.
6. Add a slosh of stock and continue cooking it until it starts to thicken to a bit of a paste.
7. Add the wine to the pan, cook it for a couple of seconds while you carry on stirring and then add the whole pink mush to the slow cooker.
8. Now lob in your veg and give it all a good stir to mix.
9. Add the Marmite to the remaining stock, stir it round so it dissolves and then add all of it to the slow cooker.
10. Keep heating it on high until it comes to the boil. Once it's boiling add the herbs and the bay leaves.
11. Then just keep stirring it every half hour or hour.

It'll be ready after about 6 hours, by which time the smell will have driven your household into a crazed hunger. Serve it with mash, or a baked potato, or some yummy fresh crusty bread. This will serve two people as a main meal with left overs for greedy-pig second helpings and lunch tomorrow. It freezes reall well so if you're left with too much it makes a great microwave meal.

Autumn in a bowl!

And it's impossible to make it taste bad!

If I remember I'll add another photo of it served up in a couple of hours.

... And here it is!