For those cold, winter days...

Today we are going to cook a beef and vegetable casserole for lunch


Ingredients for 4
olive oil
1 onion diced
1 leek diced
2 carrots cubed
2 celery sticks diced
2 garlic cloves crushed
75g. mushrooms sliced
500g braising steak cubed
2 tsb plain flour
3 sprigs of thyme
beef stock (fresh, cube or concentrate), 750ml
2 tsb tomato purée
a dash of Worcestershire sauce


Method
1.  Heat 1 tspb olive oil in a large pan.  Preferably a casserole dish (hence the name).  Add onion, carrot,

leek, celery and garlic and cook gently for 5 minutes without browning.  Add mushrooms and cook everything for 5 minutes and remove from pan.  Heat more oil and brown the beef, stir in the flour well.
2.  Return the veggies to the pan and add the thyme, stock, purée and Worcestershire sauce.  Season and mix well.  Bring to a gentle summer and cook covered for 1 and a half hours, until tender, stirring occasionally.  Serve with baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, rice or pasta.
And here's what it looks like...

You can also cook this in the oven.  One of my mum's friends used to do this and instead of all of the vegetables in the recipe above she just used carrots, turnips and onion.  It was absolutely delicious with mashed potatoes.