Beef a'la Stroganov

The first recipe is definately our favorite this winter. A stew-like dish with eastern europe origins is a perfect warmer after a cold day. Very filling with plenty of serving options. But first things first, here's a little shopping list:

• Quality beef (700 grams)
• Polish Pickled peppers (200-300 grams)
• Polish Sour cucumbers (150 grams)
• Green or yellow pepper (1 piece)
• Onions (2 medium sized pieces)
• Mushrooms (400 grams)
• Dried sweet pepper (2 spoons)
• Bayleaf (2-3)
• Beef qubes (2 pieces)
• All-spice (5 seeds)
• Double cream (100ml)
• Tomato purre (60 grams)
• Spicy mustard (40 grams)
• Olive oil
• Salt

 Overall estimate cost: £12-£14

Piece of advice before we start cooking: Make sure you cut everything in the beginning, after that everything else will be a walk in a park. So having all the ingridients cut take a frying pan and heat 4 spoons of olive oil on it and fry beef diced into small qubes. Don't fry the beef too long. 8 minutes should do the trick. Now prepare a large pot, place it on medium heat and empty the frying pan into it, the beef along with olive oil. In the meantime disslove 2 beef qubes in 2 glasses of boiling water and pour them into the pot with the beef. Add tomato purre and mustard, than add all the spices, lower the temperature and cover the pot. Let the sweet beef juice mix with spicy mustard tomato sauce. At this point you'll discover the smell is hypnotizing, hold yourself thou, there is more to come. Take the frying pan again, add 3 spoons of olive oil and stir fry the diced mushroom, whilst frying add 2 tea spoons of salt. Let the mushrooms catch some brown color on the frying pan and dont forget to stir the beef every now and than to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Add the fried mushroom to the pot and now start frying onions and green pepper (you should have diced them into feathers or small cubes) on 2 table spoons of olive oil. Once the onion is golden add everything into the pot, stir everything once more let the ingredients exchange the flavor, cover the pot and lower the temperature to minimum. We're almost there, if you made it this far the chance of failing is getting lower- happy times. You can sit back and relax properly as the beef needs to get softer which will take over an hour. Every 20 minutes stir the stew. After one hour of jolly hobing in the pot you might want to check on the meet, if you can easily divide the cube with a spoon or fork we're good to proceed with the last stage. This is the final moment when you add the sliced pickled peppers and diced sour cucumbers to the pot. Once again stir it and cover. 20 minutes after that all you need to do is add double cream to the sauce and turn off the heat. You have made it. This dish is now ready to serve!

As said in the beggining there is plenty of serving options. You can use rice, potatoes, mash potatoes, bread. The three of us we used steamed buns, but at this point anything from the list above will do.

ENJOY!