Stew in process

The smell of my latest culinary experiment wafts into the bedroom. After that botched attempt at making pancakes, I was wary. Would it end up as another feed to the bin masterpiece? I guess nothing can go really wrong when it comes to stew.

After putting off cooking it, I've finally decided that my beef cubes would probably go bad if I leave them uneaten any longer. (How long can I keep meat in a freezer? I actually still have 2 servings of salmon. The other 4 servings went into plain ole fried salmon and nova egg. Yummy!) It is freezing today as well. The remnants of Hurricane Ivan . The stew would be well appreciated even if it was slightly disasteriffic. I was actually hoping that fluttering (more like thundering) around the kitchen would warm my frozen pinkies.

Went through some recipe sites including the kuali@thestar to get a clue on how to start. Ingredients needed: 500g fillet of beef, beef cube, 2 cm cinnamon stick (who the hell sells 2 cm of cinnamon stick!?!), 1 star anise (hmmmm don't think they have these in US), 4 cloves (I presume it's garlic? Aren't there any other things you call cloves? Like clover?), 2 large onions and potatoes. Hmm they didn't mention what I was supposed to cook all that in. Some sites actually said fry the beef and garlic etc in the pot but I've always associated frying with my handy non-stick. Non-stick was dirty though. Guess the pot will have to do. Okay, down went two tablespoon of cooking oil. Heating, heating, heating.... *sizzle* I guess that's my cue that the oil is hot. So I dropped a couple of cloves of garlic in. *sputter sputter* *sizzle sizzle sizzle* maybe I should have dried that garlic? This this is like spewing oil all over me, the floor and anything it can reach. Where's the lid, where's the lid? Ah-ha! Found it behind the rice-cooker next to the fridge. Phew.... saved.

I tried to shake the contents of the pot a little. Supposed to fry until fragrant. Well, I surely smell something but meanwhile I just took out the frozen beef from the freezer. The damn thing refused to come off it's styrofoam container. Dammit, the garlic will have to wait. After rinsing the meat under the tap, those pieces of black styrofoam came off. Now I just have to put this into the pot and "fry to seal in the juices". So up came the lid and some pretty charcoal-fied garlic greeted me. Kinda looked like those dudes with a bad sun-tan, only smellier. Oh well, in you go beefy thing. Another round of protest from the hot oil.

Finally it was time to season the thing. I whipped out my handy-dandy, all-purpose marinade cum seasoning sauce -- Bovril!!! That and a pinch of salt, some soy sauce, some worchestershire sauce, pepper and a sprinkling of garlic poweder for good measure, nevermind that I already have REAL garlic in the pot. The rest of the slicing and dicing on onions, potatoes and carrots were pretty uneventful. Except for the old milking and soggy onion which made my darling have to walk out for a fresh one at Jason's deli and the fact that my darling kept feeding the potatoes to the sink and floor as he was cutting it up. So yeah, the whole pot has ben simmering for a couple of hours now. It was kinda sad though that it actually smells kinda like the ABC soup that I use to cook pretty often except with a lace of W.sauce and a lot of bovril goodness!