Vlaamse Stoverij

Les and I have been having cooking wars, but he wins most of the time because I'm happy to have someone else cook for me. However, I got my own back with my patented Vlaamse Stoverij^TM. It's based on a time honoured recipe handed down by the monks, and I cooked it for the first time on Saturday. It goes something like this:

Reagents

Meat from a hoofed animal, preferably one that's dead
Rodenbach beer
Onions
Sugar
Vinegar
Herbs (pretty much any herbs will do)
Bread
Dijon mustard
Stock cube and pepper
Oil (not Valvoline, but almost an anagram of this)

Method

Fry the onions in the Valvoline, then realise you should have fried the meat first. Add the meat while no-one is looking and fry it as well. Forget about removing the onions. It's far too late for that. You're basically doomed from this point onwards, but you may as well continue because you will starve otherwise.

Add a couple of bottles of Rodenbach, keeping one spare for private consumption. This is one of the Key Ingredients^TM. Add the salt, pepper, stock cube, herbs (I think I found some tarragon in the cupboard), vinegar and brown sugar. Do not add too much sugar otherwise you end up with quite a sweet stew which you still have to eat or you'll starve.

Don't even bother waiting until the onions have caramelised. Instead, add the bread which has been smeared with Dijon mustard, because this is basically the last thing you have to do, then you can go and do something far more useful, like work.

Turn down the heat, put the lid on, and let it do its own thing for two hours. You can stir it, but it probably won't improve the flavour. At the end, realise you haven't stirred it enough because the three slices of bread are still sitting on top of the stew. Stir like crazy until they disintegrate, then it's ready.

Results, discussion and conclusion

Consume with bread (OK, frites if you're really hard core) and more beer, which you will need to stomach the stew. Nevertheless, it was surprisingly good.

Appendix

Proficiat Tomas Vaitkus for winning stage nine of the Giro! I knew all that flat training would pay off.