Recipe Swap: Week Three

Last night I made Ken's Andouille and Chicken Jambalaya. I'm a big fan of jambalaya and this recipe ROCKED. Now, admittedly, I made my own adjustments, but that's what's so great about cooking. You can, and you know it will still turn out exceptional.

For Ken's recipe go to his blog for June.

I used chicken stock instead of water. I'm more and more convinced that adjusting with chicken stock for water in most recipes adds a lot of flavor.

Now, for this week I'm going to give Ken one of my favorite recipes. Oh who am I kidding? They're all my favorite. And this is one recipe I have never messed with. And the dark beer adds a lot of depth and flavor to this dish that I never would have imagined. I used a porter for the dark beer as it didn't really specify.

Carbonnade a la Flamande
(From what I can tell this translated means Flemish Carbonnade of beef)

Servings 8 - though you can adjust that by how much pasta you make. It heats up as left overs EXCELLENTLY. And I'm not a left over type of girl.

3/4 C All purpose flour
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/8 tsp Nutmeg (yah its an odd ingredient, but it adds a nice little "hmmmm" to the recipe)
2.5 lbs boneless chuck roast, trimmed, and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 Strips bacon, diced
2 C Chopped onion
1 T chopped garlic (I use two large cloves)
1 C Less sodium Beef Stock or broth(14.5 oz)
1 C Water
2 T Brown Sugar
2 T Red Wine vinegar
2 T Tomato paste
2 T Dijon mustard (don't use yellow mustard on this)
1 tsp Fresh Thyme
2 Bay leaves
1 (12oz) can Dark beer
2 T Chopped Fresh parsley

Combine flour, salt, pepper, Nutmeg, and steak in a large zip lock bag. Seal, shake to coat.

Heat a large dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add bacon to pan, cook 1 minute. Add beef mixture; cook 3 minutes or until browned. Do not Saute. Brown the meat on all sides. Remove beef from the pan.

Add onion and garlic to pan; saute 5 minutes or until tender.

Return beef to pan. Stir in broth, scraping the pan to loosen the browned bits. Add water, brown sugar, Tomato paste, dijon mustard, fresh thyme, bay leaves and dark beer; bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes. Uncover and cook 30 minutes ou until beef is tender.

Discard bay leaves. Garnish with parsley.

I cook egg noodles on the side and top them with this stew. Its almost like a stroganoff type set up.

Have fun. And Enjoy!