Rogue Umbrellas and A New Recipe

Yesterday was a really typical Irish Summer Day. The day started off with the sun beating down as I walked slowly to work with the hope that if I reduced my pace enough, I might avoid getting there altogether. At work,  I sat at my desk all day watching the people outside in their summer clothes swanning around catching their vitamin D quota. As the day progressed, the light faded and the sky went from cobalt to grey.

As I walked home in my summer dress, teeth chattering, the rain started. At first it was a gentle, spitting rain with some sporadic gale force winds so that I involuntarily attacked people with my umbrella and then got infuriated that they were (obviously) blaming me. I wanted to say ‘Clearly I’m not some maniac who goes around attacking people with my umbrella – do the maths, Wind gusts + umbrella = lack of control, I’m doing my f-ing best here and I’m really quite a considerate person if you get to know me’. (Is that what happened to crazy cat lady from the Simpsons? I think I’m coming around to a better understanding of how you could get to a point of such frustration that you feel the need to throw cats at people while ranting unintelligibly). At a traffic island, an enthusiastic gust of wind turned my umbrella inside out and broke three of the spokes, provoking me to growl loudly to myself amongst the marching-home-from-work-very-fast-so-I-can-get-home-and-sit-down crowd. I was seething. By the time I got home, the rain had become torrential. With utter dismay, I realised that my clothes were still on the washing line and at that stage, they were so soaked that there was absolutely no point in taking them in.

So anyway, as I wandered around the kitchen muttering furiously to myself and shouting at the cat who was doing his best to trip me up in order to score some food, I decided that I needed to have some seriously nice dinner to make up for my epic journey home from work. I had 500g of diced beef in the fridge so I googled ‘diced beef recipes’ which turned up a suggestion of Beef Pastitsada; a traditional Corfu dish of meat in tomato sauce served with pasta. This was my first time ever making this dish and I substituted rice for pasta but feel free to try it with either. You can also use chicken or lamb with this dish, it’s fairly versatile. I must point out here that I used too much tomato and overdid it on the cinnamon so please, read the ingredients properly – use either a cinnamon stick OR a generous pinch of cinnamon powder, not both, otherwise the dish will leave you lost somewhere between dinner and dessert.

Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 1 ½ hours

Beef Pastitsada

Ingredients:
250g diced beef
2 medium onions
4 cloves of garlic
1 tin of tomatoes
A LARGE glass of red wine
A splash of balsamic vinegar
4 tablespoons of olive oil
Spices:
1 cinnamon stick or a generous pinch of powdered cinnamon
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
sea salt & pepper

Parmesan cheese for topping (optional)

Cooking Method:

In a large saucepan, heat 1/3 of the olive oil and add the meat. Fry until the meat is brown on all sides.

Remove meat from the pan and set aside on a plate
Add the rest of the olive oil to the pan and set the cooker to a medium heat.





Add onions and cook until soft

Add garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes

Add the meat back in to the saucepan

Then add all of the spices. Mix well.

Add the LARGE glass of wine and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Finally, add the tomatoes and stir everything until well blended.

Reduce the heat and leave the pan to simmer for the next hour and a half.

Serve with pasta or rice with some cheese sprinkled on the top.

Enjoy!

Note: Sadly, in all my haste to eat dinner I didn’t manage to take a picture of the end result so I will post one the next time I make this.