Recipe: Vegan Beef and Stout Stew

Stout beer. Mmm delicious. Pity most brands use isinglass in the fining process. Dang. BUT I looked and looked (it was hard, because I'm not too knowledgable on beer brands) and found that Coopers makes a vegan friendly stout beer! (Bonus points for being Aussie owned and made). And thus this stew was born. (Inspired by this recipe from Martha Stewart).

For the beef part I used this stuff. Found it in the freezer in an Asian supermarket. I'm not entirely sure of it's brand. There are words everywhere. I think it's essentially frozen rehydrated TVP chunks, and it pretty much has the same texture as the type of cow you'd buy to slow cook. Except you don't have to break your jaw chewing on it. (Ew.)

Vegan Beef and Stout Stew

Serves 6

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups of beef style pieces, defrosted (or rehydrated beef style TVP slices)

2 tbsp wholemeal flour*

170g tomato paste

500g potatoes, diced in 2cm bits

1 large onion, diced

5 garlic cloves, sliced

1 carrot, diced

1 celery stalk, diced

400mL beef style stock (I use massel)

220mL vegan stout beer

2 cups frozen peas, defrosted

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Saute onion, garlic, carrot, celery and potatoes in some oil or water in a large stock pot for about 5 minutes. Add flour and stir until it starts to brown. Stir in stock, tomato paste and stout beer so no lumps form. It will thicken a bit. You may need to add extra water if it's too thick. I added about an extra cup. (*I used 3 tbsp flour and I think it was too much). Stir in defrosted beef chunks.

Bring to a boil and then turn down and simmer for about 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add peas. Cook until heated through and sauce has thickened. Taste for seasoning.

I served mine on bowtie pasta because I like pasta with stews. But you could try quinoa, brown rice...anything else really :)

A stew is the ultimate comfort food and this one doesn't disappoint. The gravy is rich and thick and we wanted to eat the whole pot! I reckons the leftovers will make a GREAT pie. So that is what I'm going to do. If the gravy isn't pie-thickness I'll just reheat it on the stove with some cornflour or something, but I don't think it'll need it. Making leftovers into a pie with perhaps a steamed green thing on the side will stretch it out to at least 8 servings I think. Depends how much pie you can eat ;). 

This reminds me a lot of something my mum used to make sometimes, except I remember disliking it immensely. Don't know why. I guess tastes change.

I would definately serve this to family, friends, anybody who enjoyed a good stew. If they didn't see me eating it I'm sure they would all think it was the 'real deal'. If you aren't a fan of fake meat, try using tofu, tempeh, muchrooms, or even a bean. I think mushrooms would be especially delicious (and much more accessible to everyone! I know not all of us live in a city with plentiful asian food marts.)  

A bit of a summery cocktail recipe

Watermelon Champagne Cocktails

Makes 4 champagne flutes

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen watermelon chunks

1/2 cup ice cubes

2 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp citrus (or plain) vodka

Sparkling white or rose of your choice

Lime to serve

Put first four ingredients in a blender and blend until it makes a slushy. Divide into four champagne flutes and top up with the sparkling wine of your choice. Or you could use real champagne (it's all supposed to be vegan). Decorate with lime slices and serve!

The wine I used was a very sweet low alcohol content sparkling wine called 'Zibibbo' by Brown Brothers (all vegan). I usually buy Yellowtail sparkling white but they didn't have any :( This wine is still lovely though, and very celebratory. I don't think you have to use a sparkling, though, still white wine would be very nice as well :)

Haven't washed my hair for a week. Hey I'm on holidays!

We were lazy again this new years; finished off the bottles of wine we bought, watched Back to the Future part 3 and hit the sack at about 9pm. There was an excuse! Nadine had to work this morning and I had to drive her and we didn't want to risk a bad breath test :P

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This year, instead of resolutions, I'm just going to write down a couple of goals for 2012. The word resolution annoys me! :P

1. I will run the Gold Coast Half Marathon this year. Already started training! I'm back to step one now after my break from the Bridge to Brisbane in...September. Lol.

2. I will change jobs.

Woohoo! Happy New Year everybody, thanks for reading my little blog :)

Sangria, the best kind of summer cocktail



There's a nectarine pictured that I didn't end up using but would be a good addition

 I bought this lovely jug at Target like, years ago purely with the intention of making sangria in the summertime. It's been about a hundred summers and I still hadn't made any! (I also can't seem to write a grammatically correct sentence). Anyway, here is my recipe for a yummy sangria. I have no idea if it's in any way authentic, I'm just basically copying what I saw the Spanish bartenders pour into our glasses while in Spain. (Or what I think I remember seeing!)

I used an average wine glass for measuring since we were on holiday and there were no measuring cups

Sangria
Makes 6-7 cups worth

Ingredients
2 glasses red wine (I used cab sav)
1 glass vodka (I used citrus vodka but plain is also good. I wouldn't reccomend vanilla.)
2 glasses sparkling plain mineral water
1/2 an orange, thinly sliced in quarters
1/2 a ruby grapefruit, thinkly sliced in quarters
1 lemon, thinly sliced in rounds
Ice for serving

Method

It's pretty simple! Just mix together all the liquid ingredients and then add the fruit. Or you could put the fruit in first and pour the liquid on top. Either way.

Cover and put in the fridge for a few hours so the fruit can marinate. When ready to serve, pour into tall glasses with some of the fruit, add some ice cubes and some fresh cut lemon slices for garnish!

 At first, the vodka is a little strong in this, but by the time I'd finished my first glass I couldn't tell! (maybe that's a hint). Use only half a glass of vodka if you aren't a fan. I also like a drier red wine, but to make it a little easier to drink use a sweet, or sparkling red (such as Lambrusco). I've had sangria in bars served with sugar in the bottom of the glass, too - I don't like to add sugar to things when I think it's unecessary, but a little bit of agave nectar or rice syrup wouldn't go astray! Or a good way to sweeten without cane sugar would be to nix the citrus, and use apple, pear, necatrine and peach slices instead. The possibilities are endless!

We spent all day Saturday drinking this (Nadine's was watered down with extra mineral water because of her head cold) and then we decided to mix up some more! I'm sorry, but there IS such a thing as too much sangria.

Lilly pilly flavoured alcohol? Bring it on!

We bought this while holidaying in Tamborine - on our wine tour we also got to visit the Tamborine Mountain Distillery (where the rules were only 5 tastings, and all but one [vodka - veeerrryy nice]  must be shared with another!).

We tried various things including: wattle toffee liqueur (uh-mazing), Lemon myrtle vodka (gonna try this one at home!) some sort of rum (or rum flavoured liqueur - I can't find it on the website), plain vodka and our choice was the Lilly Pilly gin (pictured above, and also not on the site!).

I bought a bottle of the wattle toffee for my dad, the gin for us, and fortunately for my bank account ran out of money so we had to stop there (had already bought 500000000 bottles of wine!)

While at the tasting we only had the gin by itself, so the other day I noticed we had soda water in the fridge (to make homemade mouthwash with) and half a lime (yes that yellow thing is a lime - I'm awful at photography it seems) so I decided to mix some up for myself. Nadine is participating in Dry July so she missed out this time :)

Anyway it was pretty delicious :) you could probably make a similar drink at home by making up a regular gin and tonic or soda, and crushing some lilly pilly berries in it as flavouring. For my lemon myrtle vodka I'm just going to stick some leaves into a bottle of plain vodka and hope for the best. I've done similar with a vanilla bean, and since it's now almost black I think it's ready!