Winter classics, market style. Beef, swede and dark ale, lazy-boy potato bake, carrots, with cumin and lemon
Convention dictates that the phrase ‘winter classics’, when delivered in a piece of text such as this, is followed by the phrase ‘with a twist’. Folks, there is no twist. Unless the twist is that we’re lazy. One of the beautiful things about cooking with market produce is that it affords laziness. You don’t have to work hard for genuine punchy flavour. Plus, winter cooking should be like, 20 minutes of work and a few hours of just letting things cook while you enjoy the trappings of a winter evening. Wine and fires and whatnot. These three suggestions fit that bill nicely.
Beef, swede and dark ale
Variants on this theme are core to the ‘winter classics’ genre. Hopefully, cooking with WIllie’s beers isn’t profoundly insulting. 600 grams of slow-cooking beef will do the trick for four people here. In your chosen pot, sear it as a whole piece until it’s crusty and browned. While it’s searing, dice two onions and slice four garlic cloves. Remove the beef, turn the heat down, and go in with the onions and garlic. Saute until they’re soft. While that’s happening, dice your swede into 2cm cubes. Empty a bottle of Willie Warmer into the pot and open another for yourself. Return the beef to the pot with the swede, and add about 750mls of stock. Chuck in a sprig of thyme and rosemary for good measure. Turn the temp down as low as you can, lid on, and forget about it for 3 hours.
When the beef is pulling texture, remove it, and reduce the sauce to thicken. Shred the beef, then return it to the pot to coat the whole lot in that juicy, sticky sauce. That’s it. It sounds as though there isn’t much to this recipe, but these flavours all work together brilliantly. Best served with mash, or, come to think of it, this lazy-boy potato bake.
Turns out we have a little menu shaping up.
Lazy-boy potato bake
In a restaurant, you’d call it tartiflette. Everything would be sliced very thinly and layered exactly, cream pre-reduced, cheeses weighed, and weights applied. The cooking process carefully monitored through its stages. In short, fussed over. We’re here to tell you you need none of that. Lazy-boy potato bake goes like this.
Four medium-sized potatoes should fill about a 15cm x 6cm deep baking dish. Wash your potatoes, but don’t bother peeling them. Slice a flat spot off one side. Rest them on that flat spot and make yourself half-centimetre slices. Slice two shallots and two cloves of garlic, and chop two sprigs of thyme. In a big bowl, toss this all together with 375 ml of cream and a generous handful of grated melty cheese. Gruyere will do nicely. Season well with sea salt and ground white pepper.
Pack everything into your baking dish. Put in a bit of effort to level and layer the spuds, but again, don’t fuss. More grated cheese on top, and into your oven at 150 for about 90 minutes. Turn the grill on for another few minutes if you’re not satisfied with the level of browning achieved on the top, but this is unlikely. Genuinely, 20 minutes work for a huge flavour and comfort return.
Carrots with cumin and lemon.
Dead set, this one couldn’t be easier. There may be no better example of a market vegetable that tastes infinitely better than its commercial counterpart than the humble carrot. Carrot and cumin are besties. Cumin and lemon zest are besties. Lemon zest and yoghurt are besties. Tread lightly with the garnish and spices, and roast the carrots slowly to really sweeten them up, and the whole thing will sing.
Grab a bunch of carrots, peel them, and either halve or quarter them lengthways. We like to leave about a centimetre of the green stem on for presentation. It’s good for you, but it’s optional. Toss the carrots in a tablespoon of cumin seeds you’ve crushed and a bit too much olive oil. Fret not, the extra will form part of the dressing later. Roast them at 140 for about 20 minutes, then 180 for about 10. While they’re cooking, mix two tablespoons of yoghurt with a good squeeze of lemon juice. When they’re done, while they’re hot, zest a whole lemon onto them and give them a gentle toss.
To plate, make a neat pile in the centre of the plate, letting the excess oil pool around the base. Spoon a bit of yoghurt on top and drizzle the rest in the pooling oil. It’s fine as it is, but garnish with something green if you feel like it. Perhaps some roquette leaves. Maybe you’ve got some sala verde in the fridge because you’re meez. A chopped herb of some kind. Your call.
Works well as a side to, say, beef braised in dark ale, and a potato bake.
There are oh so many winter classics, but these three just happen to fall neatly into the things-we’ve-made-for-dinner-recently category. The happenstance that they constitute an excellent occasion meal is a neat little bonus.
Enjoy!
Thanks for reading.