Stewing cuts have so much flavour, and for this dish I prefer either shin or cheek. They’re both well worked muscles, with lots of connecting tissue to melt down into the gravy. And they’re both very different in flavour. The shin provides a more classical meatiness, while the cheek has a stickiness and a richness I really enjoy.
Beer makes a great cooking liquor, but I find that lagers and bitters don’t do so well in this dish: ales and stouts are key : they have the requisite sweetness, and I see no reason why this wouldn’t work with red wine too. It also works perfectly well with just water!
And with the dumplings, you can use self-raising flour if you prefer. You’ll be able to make more dumplings, and they’ll be lighter. I just happen to like the bite and density they have here.
One final thought: this is one of those dishes which benefits from being made the day before and reheated. If you plan on doing this, don’t add the dumplings until you’ve brought it up to temperature on the re-heat. If you do, they’ll taste like a child’s bouncy ball, and that’s no fun for anyone!
Serves 6–8
1 kg beef cheek or beef shin, cut into cubes of about 2cm
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 carrots, sliced
1 tablespoon tomato purée
2 Oxo cubes
500ml beer (stout, porter or other dark ale)
several good dashes of Worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
some sprigs of thyme
some sprigs of marjoram
some sprigs of parsley
salt and freshly ground pepper
2–3 tablespoons vegetable oil
25g lard or beef dripping
1 tablespoon plain flour
some water
For the dumplings
8 tablespoons plain flour
4 tablespoons suet
1 ½ teaspoons dried marjoram
salt and freshly ground pepper
Pre-heat the oven to 200˚C, or gas mark 6.
Tie the herbs into a bouquet garni[1]. Put them into a large casserole with the carrot, garlic, tomato purée and Worcestershire sauce. Then crumble over the Oxo cubes. Set aside.
Now heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a heavy based sauté pan, and gently cook the onion until it is translucent and a little golden. Add to the casserole.
Wipe out the sauté pan so that any residual onion doesn’t burn, then return it to the heat. When it’s hot, add the remaining oil. Once it’s reached a good medium heat, brown off the beef in batches, making sure it caramelises nicely. Add each batch to the casserole as it’s done.
Once you’ve browned off all the meat, season the casserole with salt and pepper, and return the pan to the heat and melt the lard or dripping. Now add the floor, stirring and cooking it in the fat to make a roux. Once the roux is a nice golden brown, add some of the beer. Whisk the beer and the roux together, adding a little more beer and water until you have a silky sauce. Pour this into the casserole, followed by the rest of the beer. If the liquid doesn’t just cover the meat, top it off with some more water. Cover, and place in the oven for half an hour.
After half an hour, turn down the oven to 150˚C (gas mark 2), and cook for a further two and a half hours or longer.
Now it’s time to make the dumplings. In a bowl, mix together the flour and the suet thoroughly. Add the salt, pepper and marjoram and mix again. Now add cold water, a little at a time, stirring the mixture into a sticky dough.
Remove the casserole from the oven, and turn up the heat to 200˚C (gas mark 6) once more. Spoon the mixture into the casserole — this should make 6 good sized dumplings — then baste each one with the gravy.
(At this point, check the gravy for seasoning. Add a little more salt and pepper to taste.)
Return the casserole to the oven without its lid for another half an hour.
Serve.
[1] TIP — if you cannot find fresh herbs, dried will do fine for all of them, apart from the parsley — dried parsley is about as useless as a sponge is as a wallpaper stripper.
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