Happy New Year!

A kind "Disher" help to remind me that it has been a very long while since the last topic. Once I turned 40 last September, the year just kind of escaped. As you can imagine, the holiday months were busy and simply flew by, leaving me at January in Chicagoland where I have to look forward to cold, cold and more cold. On the bright side, I'm only looking at about 10 more weeks of it before Spring.

Filling time is pretty easy. I have so many hobbies that I run out of time to do them. One of my favorites is cooking. Yesterday I made a traditional Bouf Bourguignon. What a fancy name for a beef stew with red wine. I don't often follow an exact recipe, but rather take bits and pieces from many other recipes and follow instinct on the rest. Here's what I did:

Beef Stew with Red Wine:
2 # Sirloin Roast cut into 1 - 1.5 inch cubes.
A bunch of Carrots peeled and cut in half so they were about 5 inches long. I love carrots, so I used about 8 large. Not traditional, but it's my recipe!
Celery - I love celery in stews - 5-6 large ribs cut in half to make 5 inch long pieces
A small bag of peeled pearl onions. Frozen is OK. (Peeling Tip:boil the whole onions for 2 seconds. The peels fall off with nearly no tears.)
2 cans of stock (I had no fresh available, so I used 1 chicken and 1 beef I had on hand.)
A bottle of Red Wine (Used Menage a Trois today).
A little flour
A couple tablespoons of veg and.or olive oil
A few Bay Leaves

Step 1: Brown the beef
- My beef was partially frozen from the fridge (woops...). If it were thawed I would have dried it with paper towels, but it was dry being frozen. Put a handful of beef in a hot pan with olive oil. Brown all sides, then move cubes to a bowl while the next batch of beef browns.
- When all beef is brown, sprinkle a bit of flour on the cubes and return to pan to form a little crust.
Step 2: Load the crockpot
- Move beautiful brown beef into crock pot set on low.
- Deglaze beef suate pan with 1 cup wine. Reduce to a few delicious tablespoons and get every last bit into the crockpot.
- Add vegetables, bay leaves and stock to the crock pot.
- Wait patiently all day long with tummy rumbling in anticipation
-Had I thought to buy mushrooms I would have cooked them down in butter and oil at this point.
- Make your side(s). Potatoes go well with this!

Step 3: create the sauce
- About 30 minutes before ready to devour, pour crock pot liquid into a wide sautee pan.
- Reduce by 2/3
- Add 2 cups of wine to the reduced liquid.
- Reduce again to equal roughly 2 cups.
-Season with pepper, herbs, etc. as you like.
Step 4: EAT!
-Remove bay leaves (if you can find them easily)
- Spoon crock pot contents into bowls
- Add some sauce
- the rest is history.

We had fresh buttermilk biscuits as a side. They come in very handy to sop up and stray sauce.
Buttermilk biscuits
Ingredients:
2 cups AP flour
2 tablespoons lard
2 tablespoons cold butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
Pinch of sugar
1 cup Buttermilk
Step 1: Bowl ingredients
Combine all but buttermilk in a bowl until the mix resembles crumbs or very small peas.
Add 3/4 cup buttermilk and mix around. If the mix seems dry, add the remaining 1/4 cup.
Mix slightly.
Step 2: Knead and Cut
Turn mix onto counter (I use wax paper at this point)
Knead 4-6 times, then flatten the mixture out in a disc roughly 3/4 to 1 inch thick.
Cut into whatever shape suits you. I make 4 inch circles with frilly edges, but that's me.
Ste 3: Bake
Bake in 425F oven for 11-14 minutes - when they just start to turn golden brown and delicious.

Happy winter!