Ewa told me a while ago, having first seen my blog, there is a film I absolutely have to see. I bumped into it in HMV yesterday, watched it, loved it, cooked from a little cookbook attached to it and made Florian watch it tonight. It’s called ” Julia & Julie”, awesome movie.

Being off today, I had all this time to go to Waitrose, do my shopping and then make the stew as well as the dessert.

First things first, though.I fried a few bacon rashers, put them aside in the casserole. Then I browned a few chunks of beef, not too many, as I cook for two most of the time. Put it in the casserole, seasoned well and dusted with flour. In all those meat and bacon juices I sauteed some roughly chopped onions and carrots, added to the rest, then poured some good red wine and beef stock over,just enough to cover the meat,  added some crushed garlic, tomato paste,thyme,  a bay leaf and stuck in the oven for about 3 hours to let it cook off slowly. Now, in Julia’s recipe there are some fried mushrooms and onions added by the end, I added some of my quality dried mushrooms, known in England as porcini and being damn expensive. I’m a lucky Oluta, who has a big jar of them in my cupboard, thanks to my parents who are keen mushroom pickers and supply me every year with more than I can use. The flavour is magnificent.

I served my beef with mashed potatoes, for which I use a potato ricer, lots of butter and some seasoning. We found the very rich sauce against the nearly sweet flavour of the mash very pleasant.

To be done again. 🙂