Duty chef

With the regular chef diverted to Abbeyfield (reference 1), I was duty chef today, and, as it turned out, the first bit of proper cooking that I have done for a while.

Buy a pound of shank beef, looking good and full of sinew and flavour, from our local butcher (reference 2). Good dark colour. Potatoes and mushrooms from the Costcutter next door.

Cut the beef, across the grain, into small slices about 5mm thick. There must have been plenty of sinew as I had to sharpen the knife a couple of times as I went along.

Brown in a couple of tablespoons of virgin rape seed oil - from Essex I think - and then add a couple of onions finely chopped. Add a little water, enough to almost cover, and simmer with lid on for 90 minutes. Add a couple of sticks of celery, finely sliced across the grain. Simmer for a further 10  minutes. Add the chopped stalks of 8 button mushrooms. Add a heaped tablespoon of cold mashed potato as a thickener. 5 minutes before the off add the mushroom caps, quartered.

In parallel, prepare and boil appropriate amounts of rice and crinkly cabbage. Leave potatoes for another day.

Good gear. My only comment would be that the cabbage would have been better cooked 3 minutes, perhaps even 150 seconds, rather than 4 minutes.

Rounded off with the pineapple upside down cake left over from yesterday. Which when entire, looked something like the one at reference 3, with the most visible difference being that BH omitted the (glacé) cherries which were not held in place by being in the centre of a pinapple ring, a concession to wobbly senior hands.

Snooze with Guardian draped tastefully over one. Monkey Life on low in the background.

Reference 1: https://www.abbeyfield.com/.

Reference 2: http://www.masterbutchersepsom.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.nigella.com/recipes/pineapple-upside-down-cake.