Monday, May 15, 2006

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 StoverijTM. 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 IngredientsTM. 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.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

vervang Dijon musterd door Gentse Tierenteyn mosterd en het zal nog beter smaken, met het bier zit je al goed.
Thomas V dank zij de Scheldetrainingen?!

De trainer/chef

Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff,

Rodenbach is good, but at home my wife always uses a dark brown, very sweet table beer. Definitly you must eat stoverij with frieten, some salade and a hole lot of mayonaise. That is very delicious (but not soo healty).

Cheers, Philippe

Jeff Jones said...

Bedankt Chef Rosa en Philippe, ik zal het proberen. Frieten waren te veel voor onze kleine eetlust.

Cast off tomorrow (hopelijk...)

The one-armed bandit

Anonymous said...

tafelbier???
frieten en mayonaise ok, hoe vettiger hoe...
er bestaan ook zoete bruine bieren, alhoewel niks boven het zuurzoete van het Oudenaards bier (Rodenbach is daar familie van), ook geueze (echte geueze) is delicious

Bocuse

Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff,

De volgende keer nog 2 sneetjes peperkoek bijvoegen. En het bruine bier moet inderdaad niet van uitzonderlijke kwaliteit zijn. Door het verwarmen gaat het aroma toch voor een groot deel verloren. Men giet toch ook geen Mouton Rothchild van 1954 bij konijn met pruimen!

Groeten,

Jo
Vegetariƫr en sporadisch bierdrinker