Year Two Day Seventy Two - Stew ( with Orange)

Dear all, 

We are having some very variable weather of late and as we awoke to a rather grey day ( which included extreme weather and hurricane warnings) Darren suggested that maybe we cobble together a warming stew to fend off the chill. 

I fired up google and my first port of call was this recipe - inspiration from the original Domestic Goddess, Queen Nigella. http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/recipes/1638/comforting-beef-casserole

At this point, I should have consulted D, but instead, I jotted down the required ingredients and made a beeline for the supermarket. 

For this recipe I needed to following:

• Olive oil
• Onions
• Carrots
• Flour
• Salt and pepper
• Dried Sage
• Ground Allspice
• Stewing or chuck steak
• I large Orange zested AND juiced ( I should have seen warning bells here)
• Guinness
• Water
• Bay Leaves

First up, I cooked up the onions and carrots until soft. I then used a great tip mentioned by Nigella to season the meat. I put the flour and all the spices in a zip lock ( plastic ) bag, dropped in chunks of the chuck, shook them around until equally covered and then plopped them in the pan ( with some oil). 

Once the meat was browned, I transferred it to the bowl holding the onions and carrots. In the pan in which I was cooking up the meat, I added the Guinness and *gulp* the orange zest and juice. I had a code-red alarm bell going off simultaneously but ignored it vehemently (I trust Nigella). 

I cooked up the Orangey-Guiness Jus, added the water and then the meat and veg. I then let the stew cook for about 3 hours until the meat was tender ( and our apartment smelt like a bowl of [meaty] pot pourri)

So, after a long cook-off, we dug into the stew ( with some baked potatoes that had been cooking slowly in the oven). I was nice, but damn it tasted of orange. It smelt of orange, tasted like orange and had a orangey-tinge. This stew was fruity! It was okay.. but lets just say that we added a large quantity of Tabasco to neutralize the orange explosion and I have learnt a hard lesson about using citrus fruits in an autumnal stew. Ahhhh I love cooking!