Great British Beef Week (23-30 April) needn't mean steaks or pies - why not celebrate with a recipe from Broth to Bowl: Mastering the Art of Great Soup from Six Simple Broths?
"There are good holistic reasons to go to the trouble of making meat broths. We have become very wasteful in our cooking, tending to go for the choice bits of breast or fillet but a lot of the real nutrition is found closer to, and in, the bones themselves. The upside is bones are cheap, nutritious and you will taste the difference."
Award-winning author Drew Smith includes a low-and-slow basic beef and tomato soup, and then goes onto to show how these can be transformed into a variety of delicious recipes from a superior Beef Tea to classic French Onion Soup, Borscht or Rich Man's Pho.
This is a good recipe if you are short on space or time. You can substitute chicken for the beef and follow the same technique.
Ingredients
300G trimmed BEEF, CHUCK or BRAISING STEAK, with no fat
2 tbsp OLIVE OIL
1 ONION
1 CARROT
20G UNSALTED BUTTER
2 fat TOMATOES
1 glass RED WINE
PARSLEY to serve
SERVES 2
Method
Preheat the oven to 180–190°C/Gas mark 4–5. Chop the meat into small cubes. In a wide frying pan, warm enough olive oil to cover the base. As it starts to smoke, add the beef pieces and shallow fry them for 4–5 minutes so they are well coloured. Roughly chop the onion and carrot, then add to the beef and let them colour for a few minutes. Take everything out of the pan and drain off any fat.
Add the butter to a large saucepan and heat until it foams and is just turning brown. Put the beef and vegetables back in and stir well. Cover with a litre of water and let it bubble away until the liquid has
almost disappeared.
Meanwhile, put your tomatoes in a roasting pan with a little olive oil or butter and roast for 15–20 minutes until soft.
When your beef soup is reduced by at least half, top up to a litre again and repeat the process, then let it cook down again so that it is almost gone. Finally, add the red wine. The soup should be dark and the meat should be soft. Tip in the tomatoes and garnish with parsley.
Recipe Extracts from Broth to Bowl: Mastering the Art of Great Soup from Six Simple Broths by Drew Smith, published by Modern Books, £20 hardback
