Melt-in-the-mouth beef with sweet shallots in an extremely rich sauce.
This month Travel Supermarket has challenged me to recreate a classic dish from either Spain or Greece which includes a fresh twist as part of their #HolidayFlavours campaign. Right up my street, I thought!
And so I’ve chosen to go down the Greek route, mainly because a number of their rich stew-like dishes sit perfect with the time of year that we’re in at the moment, when rich comfort food is all we crave.
You’ll find many recipes on the internet for stifado and so my task was to make this different and to take the dish to the next level, which I’m hoping I achieved for you with the additions of marrow and umami.
Roasting marrowbones and then adding them to the stew delivers an incredibly flavoursome stock which is also very dense in essential nutrients. The umami, on the other hand, is best described as a method of taking your food from great to amazing. It’s a combination of flavours that are high in glutamate, which as well as delivering an enriched flavour is also rapidly metabolised and is an energy source!
The addition of the Yorkshire Pudding replaces the need to serve the dish with pasta or a chunk of bread, which is usually recommended. To achieve the ‘Greek style’ element to the Yorkshire Pudding I used my award-winning recipe but added a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg to complement the flavours of the beef stifado.
Beef Feather Blade & Marrow Stifado
Ingredients
- 3-4 feather blade steaks (approx 180g each)
- 300g of shallots
- 1 large onion
- 400g marrow bones (approx)
- 1 can tinned chopped tomatoes
- 3 garlic
- 3 cloves
- 1 heaped teaspoon of umami paste
- 500ml beef stock
- 1 glass of red wine
- 2 tbsp of red wine vinegar
- 2 tbsp of tomato puree/paste
- 1/2 cinnamon stick
- 2 sprigs of rosemary
- 1 tsp of ground nutmeg
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 knob of butter
- black pepper
- salt
Method
- Roughly chop one large onion and place in a roasting tray together with your marrow bones and the leaves from one sprig of rosemary. Rroast at 180c for 30 mins.
- While the marrow is roasting, sear your steaks in a frying pan before transferring them to a separate dish.
- Add the roasted onions from the marrow tray to the pan you used to sear your meat together with some olive oil and garlic.
- Add the glass of red wine and 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar, together with tomato puree and umami paste. Cover and leave for 5 minutes.
- Return your steaks to the pan and add the cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, bay leaves, sprig of rosemary, and salt and pepper to taste. Keep stirring to let all your ingredients mix together.
- Add your roasted marrow bones to the pan. The marrow should still be in the bones but will have softened. This will melt away in the pan as it cooks.
- Finally add a tin of chopped tomatoes and the beef stock.
- Bring to a simmer before transferring to the oven at 180c for 1 hour.
- Meanwhile place the shallots into hot water to soften the skin and peel.
- Remove the now empty marrow bones and add the shallots to the stifado after one hour of cooking in the oven and return to the oven for a further 1 hour until the meat is tender.
- Once out of the oven add a knob of butter to the sauce to give a silk smooth look and taste.
Yorkshire Pudding
Ingredients
- 225g plain flour
- 4 eggs
- 300ml milk
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp white pepper
- Pinch of nutmeg
- Pinch of cinnamon
- Beef dripping
Method
- Set the oven to 240c. Add a pea size piece of beef dripping to each Yorkshire Pudding tin hole and allow the fat to melt in the oven for 8-10 minutes.
- Sift the flour into a bowl before adding all 4 eggs (do not whisk the eggs before adding to the flour).
- Add the remaining dry ingredients and half the milk.
- Whisk until the batter is smooth before adding and whisking in the remaining milk.
- Once the dripping is (blue) smoking in the oven, fill the holes 3/4 full with the batter and return to the oven.
- Immediately reduce the temperature to 200c and bake for 30 minutes.
For a chance to win a holiday to Spain or Greece up to the value of £500 as part of their Holiday Flavours Challenge visit www.TravelSupermarket.com
