Sloppy seconds. The best ever day after.

I’ve decided to combine two nights of cooking in this post because the second dinner is all thanks to the first. In amongst all my counting down, I’ve been doing lots of planning and thinking about when and where I’ll do the remaining recipes and it just made sense to do these two together.

Melt-in-Your-Mouth Shin Stew

Leftover Stew Risotto

On Monday night, I made the stew. I struggled to get shin, which I can’t say I was overly devastated about. I know it makes no sense, because I eat thigh or rump or wing, but shin just kinda creeped me out. I think because I’ve grazed, scraped, nicked-while-shaving, bruised, bumped and bashed my own shins so many times, that to me, a shin conjures up images too close to the bone. Ha! The shin is the bone right? Not the flesh?

In the end, I just used some good heart smart beef. But before that, I chopped red onions, carrots and celery and gently fried them with whole cloves of garlic, some rosemary sprigs, bay leaves, dried mushrooms and a cinnamon stick. Once softened, I added the beef (lightly floured) and stirred it all together before adding S&P, two tins of tomatoes and ¾ of a bottle of red wine. After bringing it to the boil, I covered it with a layer of double thickness foil then the lid of the pot and bunged it in a warm oven for 2.5 hours.

The best thing about this stew? The smell of the cinnamon wafting through my apartment during cooking. It was quite distracting and kept making me want to open the oven and check, but then the double layer of lids – foil and lid – would deter me. Torn, so torn.

Once it had reached melt in the mouth status – the meat literally fell apart when you forked it – we served it up with cous cous and peas. Delicious.

Then on Tuesday night, I whipped up a quick risotto and stirred through the leftover stew. This is actually one of Jamie’s risotto recipes and as my cousin Peps and I recovered from the mouth watering delight that was this gooey dinner, we both reflected on the randomness, yet so-rightness, of using leftover stew to flavour a plain risotto. Your mixing the saucey stew straight into the soak-it-up rice.

Genius. Jamie, you never cease to amaze.

Xx