Irish Beef & Guinness Stew

TGIF! We have a big weekend planned with a double birthday party for Emmett (4) and Isla (2) and some cooking to take the pressure off the week ahead. I'm also hoping for some downtime to finish reading "Tread Softly on my Dreams" by Gretta Curran Browne.  I'm enjoying this book so much. It is the life story of Robert Emmet and couldn't be more fascinating if it was fiction. I'm so glad that it's Part 1 of a Trilogy so that I can read them all.

Reading about Ireland and Irish history over the last week put me in the mood to cook something Irish.  It doesn't get more Irish than Guinness.  And I love beef stew.  In fact, other than stuffing, the dish that I remember being most excited about when I was a kid was my mom’s beef stew.  It was and still is the best. I’ve tried to make her version of beef stew a few times but I feel like I’m now old enough and wise enough to leave well enough alone.  It never really tastes like hers. Even if it did, I probably wouldn’t perceive it that way.  So these days I do different variations, knowing that I will feel more successful if I’m not trying to make it taste like a favorite food memory.

I’m surprised that I have never made beef stew with Guinness before. I thought it was delicious. Very hearty and savory with the Guinness giving it the subtle complexity in flavor that a makes a dish like this one shine.  Paul asked me if it had bbq sauce in it which left me equal parts confused and insulted - though I’m sure he meant it in the best way since he LOVES bbq sauce (and managed to polish off quite a lot of this stew). Maybe it was the brown sugar? We ate this with some horseradish sauce made by mixing sour cream with scallions, prepared horseradish, lemon juice and salt and pepper. 

If you aren't planning on making corned beef and cabbage for Saint Patrick's Day you might want to make this. Next time, if I'm feeling ambitious, I may try to adapt this recipe to make a beef and Guinness pie. Or hand pies. Yum. 

Irish Beef & Guinness Stew

1 ½ lbs lean beef stew meat, cut into 1” cubes

salt and pepper

3 Tbsp vegetable oil

2 onions, roughly chopped

1 Tbsp tomato paste

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup all purpose flour

4 cups chicken broth, low salt

1 1/4 cup Guinness draft

1 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar, firmly packed

1 Tsp minced fresh thyme

1 lb yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1" pieces

1 lb carrots, cut into 1" pieces

2 Tbsp fresh minced parsley

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Season beef with salt and pepper. Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium-high heat until shimmering. 

Remove beef from Dutch oven.  Plate Dutch oven back on the stovetop over medium heat.

Add onions and ¼ teaspoon salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until well browned, 8 to 10 minutes.

Add tomato paste and garlic and cook until rust-colored and fragrant, about 2 minutes. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute.

Whisk in broth, ¾ cup Guinness, sugar, and thyme, scraping up any browned bits. Bring to simmer and cook until slightly thickened, about 3 minutes.

Stir in beef and return to simmer. Transfer to oven and cook, uncovered, for 60 minutes, stirring halfway through cooking.

Stir in potatoes and carrots and continue cooking until beef and vegetables are tender, about 90 minutes longer, stirring halfway through cooking. Stir in remaining ½ cup Guinness and parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

The best thing about this dish is that it gets better with time, making it a great option for cooking on the weekend and eating later in the week.

Saturdays: Breakfast for Dinner

Saturdays are sort of a free-for-all around here.  Some Saturdays we are all about cooking, cleaning and getting other housework done, some are packed with activities and socializing and some are just plain slow and lazy.  If we aren’t having anyone over for dinner, Saturday’s evening meal can be a free-for-all as well.  Soup, leftovers and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches come to mind.  We aren’t a big breakfast-for-dinner family but on weekends anything goes. This weekend we had some sausages, courtesy of the Boutique, in the fridge and not much else. We added some eggs, beans, toast with butter and Vegemite for me and rice for Paul and made it a meal.  It made me wonder why we don’t do breakfast for dinner more often.  

I'm so thankful that I always have sausages in my freezer and beans in my cupboard.  Have you been by the Boutique lately? They've got a new freezer and its stocked with all of the good stuff. Brown bread, soda bread, sausages, black pudding, sausage rolls and so much more. 

A Sweet Welcome: Chocolate Biscuit Cake

The cast of characters.

We have some new neighbors across the street. Emmett and I, as is quickly becoming our mother-son tradition, decided to bake something to welcome them to their new home.  We made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies and then decided to try something new to add to the basket of goodies we were bringing over.

Kelly, a friend of the stores, sent this recipe to my brother-in-law who forwarded it to me. She spotted this cake in many cafes and bakeries throughout Ireland and noticed that everything needed to make it is available at the Irish Boutique.  It’s really a great idea and one that is so easy and straightforward. Emmett will probably be able to make this all by himself soon enough. Let’s face it, he’ll probably do a better job than I did.

If I’m being honest, this was almost a recipe fail. Isn’t it funny how it can be easier to execute a recipe that involves several components and techniques than one that is basically an assembly-only task? Well, I totally rushed through this one and didn’t trust my instincts but you know what? I think it actually worked out for the best. In fact, since I still have NO IDEA what this was supposed to turn out like, I may have executed it perfectly. The bottom line is that the result was delicious and we had a lot of fun making this.

As you can see from the recipe below, it’s a simple process, a lot like making rice krispie treats. The reason I’m not so sure I did this correctly is because, based on the chocolate biscuit cakes I’ve seen before, including, famously, Prince William’s groom’s cake, the ratio of chocolate to biscuits is usually much higher. This was almost all biscuits held together by a little bit of the syrup-butter-chocolate mixture and definitely had more of a crisp cookie-like texture than that of a cake.

I had my doubts about including all of the crushed cookies when I looked at the amount of syrup-butter-chocolate mixture but went ahead and added them all anyway. Truth be told, I’m glad that I did! I loved the texture of this and the fact that I could taste the biscuits without having them overpowered by chocolate. And, for me, it would have been way too sweet if I changed the ratio of biscuits to chocolate.  It’s still quite sweet and boy, did my middle one Isla enjoy her piece.  So did my co-workers who devoured a tin of them in no time. I would like to try this one again using dark chocolate instead of milk and substituting some of the chocolate called for with unsweetened chocolate (though I’m pretty sure the rest of the family will still prefer this version). I know a couple of little people who would be happy to serve as my cookie smashers.

Thank goodness Isla was napping for this. Otherwise I'm sure there would have been a fight for the crown of No. 1 Biscuit Crusher. 

Chocolate biscuit cake

275g (10 oz; 2 ¼ sticks) Kerrygold Irish butter

150ml (about ⅔ cup) Lyle’s golden syrup

225g (8oz) Good chocolate -  Cadbury works very well*

200g (7oz) Digestive biscuits - broken into small pieces*

200g (7 oz) Rich tea biscuits - broken into small pieces

Packet of Maltesers

You can also add a variety of add ins, like smashed up crunchie bars, raisins,  cherries ,nuts etc.

*If  you want it to be more like Prince William’s reduce the amount of biscuits by ½ (about 7 oz).

Line a 2 pound loaf tin with a double layer of parchment paper.  

He flung the rolling pin aside and got in there with his hands. 

Break biscuits into small pieces.

Melt chocolate in double boiler, add syrup and butter and mix until smooth, being careful not to overheat the chocolate.  

Remove from double boiler and add to your bowl of broken biscuits and stir in maltesers.  Combine until evenly coated.

Scoop mixture into prepared tin.  

Place another piece of parchment on top of cake and press down on loaf to remove any air pockets.  

Cover completely and refrigerate for a few hours.  Once chilled you can remove from pan and slice and serve.  

It is a rich tasting cake so start with small slices to serve.