今年は久しぶりに、クリスマスイブのディナーにビーフの煮込みを作ります。

煮込み料理は前日に作る方が美味しくなるので今日作るつもりだったのに、忘れていました。ミンスパイを作ってから思い出しましたが中途半端な時間から作るよりもと、夫が寝てから夜中に作ることに。

It’s been a while since I made Beef Casserole for our Christmas Eve’s dinner, as we’ve been away on this day in recent years,but this year I will as we are home for Christmas.

As a Casserole is always nicer when cooked on the day before, I was planning to cook it during the day today but I totally forgot!  I remembered it after we’d made the mince pies but by then I would have disturbed my husband cooking dinner, so I decided to cook it after my husband had gone to bed.

今年のビーフの煮込みは、適当に作ってしまいました。ビーフはスネ肉。ドライポルチーニをコクを出すために入れたので、イタリア風かな？あると思っていたセロリがだめになっていたので香味野菜は玉ねぎとにんにくだけ。煮込んだ人参が好きなのでごろごろと大きな人参をたっぷり入れて、炒めた時に小麦粉を加えてワイン１本を少しずつ注いでから少しチキンストックを足してベイリーフで香りづけし、余っていたピッツァソース（パックのトマトとにんにくを煮詰めただけのもの）を加えただけのシンプルなもの。１６０度のオーブンで１時間半煮込んだところでチェックしたらもう柔らかくなっているようだったので、そこでストップ。明日固まった脂を捨てて、ビーフと香味野菜を分けて香味野菜をフープロにかけてから戻して温めますが、とろみが足りなさそうなのでとろみを足す予定です。

This year, I cooked it without any recipe.  We bought Shin of beef yesterday so I marinated it in red wine overnight last night and cooked it today.  I used some dried porcini so maybe this is a little Italian.  I thought we had some celery but it was going off so I just used onion and garlic for the base and added a lot of large carrots with the beef.  While I was sautéing the beef I added some flour, then poured in the red wine little by little and added some chicken stock to barely cover the beef and carrot.  I added a couple of bay leaves, the left over pizza sauce (it’s the one I made the other day, it only has garlic and one of those small carton of tomatoes), so very simple.  I cooked it in the oven at 160 for an hour and a half and checked the beef and found it was already quite tender, so I took it out and am letting it cool down in a Tupperware.  Tomorrow, I will get rid of the solidified fat, then separate the chopped onion and garlic from the beef and liquid, put the onion and garlic in the food processor with a little liquid then put all together and warm it up with some added vegetables (probably potato).  At this stage it doesn’t seem as if I added enough flour and it’s very liquidy so I may have to make it thicker.

香港で親しいお友達だけにおもてなし教室をしていたことがありますが、そういえばあの頃はよく真夜中にこうしてお料理していたな、と懐かしい気持ちになりました。

When I was running an entertaining class in Hong Kong (only for my good friends) I used to cook like this around midnight – nice memories.