Beef Bourguinon

There is nothing better than a Friday night in during Autumn. I got home from work, made a cup of tea, put the PJs on and threw my prepared tea into the oven. Within a few hours, my house was full of lovely aromas including apple Yankee Candles and the various Autumn scented air fresheners. Heaven.

Now, I am curled up with the dog, and my husband is out so I can just enjoy rubbish TV and a glass of wine. Perfect night to me!

Ingredients:

500g stewing steak, diced as preferred

200g bacon, cut into cubes

8 shallots, peeled

4 carrots, cut into chunks

2 sticks of celery, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic

2 tbsp tomato purée

450ml rich beef stock (I like the Knorr stock pots)

100ml red wine

200g button mushrooms

Instructions:

1. In a casserole dish (or in a pan if you want to cook in the slow cooker), heat some Fry Light and brown the beef in batches. It's important not to over-crowd the dish - well-browned meat will have an intensified flavour. Remove the beef and keep on a plate. Repeat as necessary.

2. Fry the bacon and shallots in the same pan, until the bacon is cooked through. Add the beef back to the pan (or place all in the slow cooker and use from now on).

3. Add the carrots, celery, garlic and tomato purée to the meat mixture. Add the red wine and reduce the liquid. Give the dish a good stir, releasing any flavours on the bottom of the dish. 

4. Make up the beef stock as directed, add to the casserole dish and bring to the boil. (Tip: I actually did these steps this morning and then left it ready to put in the oven tonight.)

5. Place the casserole dish in the oven and cook on 160 for 2 hours (or in the slow cooker on low for 6-8 hours).

6. Add the mushrooms and stir through. Return to the oven for 30 minutes. 

7. When done, stir well, before serving with accompaniments of your choice (I went for herb roasted potatoes).

 

(I won't lie - my photo is me pretending I didn't have a mush bigger portion after!!) 

Unicorn's Blood Cocktail

Ingredients:

2 tbsp gin

2 tbsp elderflower cordial

Prosecco

Method:

1. Add gin and elderflower.

2. Top up with prosecco. 

Felix Felicis 'Liquid Luck' Cocktail

Ingredients:
1 tsp lemon sorbet
1 tsp lime cordial
Prosecco

Instructions:
1. Add lemon sorbet and lime cordial to a tall flute glass. Mix to begin to melt the sorbet.

2. Pour prosecco on top and mix quickly (but gently).

Shredded Chipotle Chicken

For Halloween, we invited friends over for a ghoulish feast and potions (cocktails). We had seen the idea of a dissected man online so decided to go with it...

In all honesty, we cheated quite a lot. We've been decorating, I still had a lot of school work to do so we went for quick and easy options. The intestines (Taste the Difference apple and pork & pork and caramelised onion sausages) and ribs (apple BBQ pork ribs) were out of a packet and we take no credit for them (other than for choosing a very good selection from Sainsbury's!). However, the shredded flesh (chipotle chicken) is a recent Slimming World recipe from one of their magazines, and I love it. Luckily, our friends really enjoyed it too, so much so that they wanted the recipe. And here we are...

Ingredients (serves 4):

3 skinless chicken breasts

Sauce: 

4 tbsp tomato ketchup

2 tbsp cider vinegar

1 tbsp mustard powder

2 tbsp chipotle paste

2 tbsp Worcester sauce

1 tsp black treacle

2 tsp smoked paprika

Salt & pepper

Instructions:

1. Boil the chicken for 2 minutes, then turn off the heat and cover. Leave in the boiling water to poach for 30 minutes. Remove from the water and set aside to cool for 5 minutes. 

2. Mix together the ingredients of the sauce and set aside. 

3. Using two forks, pull apart the chicken breasts until appropriately shredded. Stir through the chipotle sauce. 

4. Add the chicken and sauce back to a pan, and cook over a medium/low heat for 10 minutes until hot and serve as desired.

The recommendation in the magazine was to serve in bread rolls, but we enjoyed with the other meat, fries and coleslaw. This is currently 2 syns per serving, but please check syn values before cooking.