Wednesday 11 April 2012

Beef Shin with Ginger & Soy

Every now and again I get one of those recipe chain email thingys asking me to cut and paste the instructions and then send a recipe to the person at the top and then forward to 20 friends. 20?! I definitely have 20 friends but not 20 who would oblige with the email, thus dooming me to a life of bad luck and bad food or something. Anyway, I got one the other day and probably forwarded to about 10 friends with no faith that I'd get anything back, but I did. It seems my sister's friends are all very good at this kind of thing, and I got this awesome recipe from my sister's friend Daisy. It was good for two reasons, one is it involved slow cooked beef shin, and the other was that it required lots of ginger (I still have some in the fridge from my Dad's Saturday market ginger binge, he gave me an actual bag full). I changed her recipe slightly, not to improve it but to suit me and the fridge contents and it was divine. Thanks weird email chain.

Feeds 4-6. Pre-heat the oven to 130c. Take approx 1.5kg beef shin chopped into large chunks (this is off the bone, if on the bone allow for extra weight), season, then in some hot groundnut oil, brown in a big casserole, do this in batches if needed. Set the meat aside and now gently fry 6 chopped cloves of garlic and 2 thumb sized bits of ginger, chopped, adding more oil if you need to. Stir about until softened but don't burn the garlic. Add 3tbsp of tart fruit jam or jelly such as redcurrant, plum or crab apple and 150ml soy sauce. Return the meat to the pan and add enough apple juice (I used dry cider) to just cover the meat. Add 2 tbsp cider vinegar and a couple of hot red chillies, chopped up, or whole. Stir well, cover and cook in the oven for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, until the meat is really soft. This is so delicious served up simple on some steamed rice, with a healthy serving of wilted greens on the side.

What on earth am I going to do with the rest of this bloody ginger??!!

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