Saturday Kitchen

Anyone following the Tour de France Knit ALong might know by now that the second intermediate sprint was won by our very own Caffeine Faerie, for her step-by step onion soup! Congratulations CF - I'm so sitting next to you at our next SnB - maybe some of your winnerness will rub off!!! =)

I was inspired by the winning entry post, and thought it might be fun to take you through a Saturday Kitchen adventure chez Kuka.

Being the final weekend of le Tour, we decided we would have somethings at least vaguely frenchish - and eventually settled on a very vaguely frenchish dish - beef casserole.

I based my very vaguely frenchish casserole very loosely on this recipe, mostly because I was intrigued by the scone-like dumplings baked on top. It's from the Taste.com.au website, which has hundreds of recipes that have been published in a range of Australian cooking magazines, all for free (hopefully reminding myself of that as I stand at the checkout will stop me from buying so many of those magazines!)

Ready? Ok...


There's everything we need - cubed beef, chopped vegies (I think the recipe just asks for onion, but I added some carrot and celery too. In hindsight I would have thrown in some potato as well), bay leaves, herbs (again not quite as the recipe specifies - I couldn't find fresh thyme at the supermarket and came home to find I didn't have any dried so I used dried Italian herb mix), flour, beef stock and wine (one glass for the pot, one for me ;)).

First we brown the beef all over.


Then remove the beef from the pan, and throw the vegies in and stir until the onion is soft.


Chuck the beef back in, along with the stock, bay leaves, herbs and wine (ooh, not my glass though. Hang onto that!)


Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for 1.5 hours.


This is a good time to try to decide what to make for dessert, to weave in the ends on your almost finished knitting, or just sit back with a(nother) glass of that red...


Mmmm ready!


Now for those Parmesan sconey dumplings on top.


Rub the butter into the flour, add the milk and cheese and mix into a dough.
Pour the casserole into an oven-proof dish, and top with the scone dough (I split mine into 16 balls so I could do 4x4 since my dish is square, and since I have symmetry issues)


Bake in a hot oven for 20 minutes, and TAA DAA:


This was soooooo good! I was pretty sceptical about the dumplings/scones on top - I really didn't think they'd work and expected them to come out quite undercooked and soggy, but they were perfect... just the thing to get us through a tough night of time trialing! =)

xo