Dad’s Beef Stew.

One of the best things that happened on my parents’ trip here was that my dad decided to use this piece of beef that i bought a million years ago – i had no idea what that piece of meat was. It was a beef brisket with bone.

He decided to make a stew and there was no definitive recipe for him to use – so he made up his own. We loved it so so much, we went to the Butcher’s the next day and got 1.5kg of ox/beef tail.

Using nearly half a bottle of Brown Brothers Tarrango.

Here’s the recipe i got off him. – not 100% accurate – just play around with ingredients. It’s not 100% western, nor is it 100% chinese.

 
Ingredients

1.5kg Ox tail – get the butcher to chop it for you (or beef brisket w/ bone and fats – which is cheaper but has a lot more fats)
1/2 bottle of red wine (any quality is ok. there is a difference, but it’s ok. we used a $5 bottle the 2nd time)
Dark Soya Sauce
1-2 roughly chopped carrots (the carrots we had were really sweet)
Onions
Leeks
Celery
Spring Onions
Potato
*You can see what veggies you have and use accordingly – we didn’t use celery the first time and didn’t use leeks the second time. It was ok.

Directions

In a pot of boiling water, add the ox tail/beef and let it cook. This is to get rid of any gamey taste the beef might have. Let it cook for approx 10-15mins.

Discard the water and place the beef back into the pot. Add around 1/2 bottle of red wine. and the veggies. Add water enough to cover it generously. Cover and let it gently simmer for 2 hours and 30 minutes.

The beef should be extremely tender and the soup flavoursome but.

It will be very sweet – because of the wine and the veggies.

my dad then came up with the idea of adding a little dark soya sauce which was a great idea – it added richness, colour and saltiness to the dish.

*Make sure it is dark soya sauce – which is much darker in colour and less salty than soya sauce itself.

The dish is now ready to be served. Perfect!

The stew is sticky – from the fats and the wine, the meat is tender and very flavourful.

That day, we also took out of small little steamboat pot – instead, we ended up preferring to bbq our food instead. We bought salmon and thinly sliced those, there were vegetarian tofu, prawns and marinated pork slices.

 
Fish even ran down to get a pack of VB to accompany the dinner. and to cook
some of our food in. See the aluminium foil in the bbq tray, we would place the slices of salmon, prawns and tofu there to cook – adding a good amount of VB and salt. Adds a great fragrance to the food.

A very very good dinner. and i hope it happens again soon. =)