I have this awesome website, http://www.epicurious.com/. This is one place that I go to whenever Bob gets his craving for anything non-Chinese. And through here, I found the best recipe for beef stew (beef replaced with oxtail). What I love about this website is the reviews from people who tried the recipe. I just need to compile those feedback, makes my life easier so I can skip the trial and error part.
I cooked this once before, and received rave reviews, even from my bro who seldom eat beef. I cooked it last night again. Didn't came out as good as the first. Feedback was the stew wasn't beefy enough. It was okay for me though, I'm more than happy to have the rich, dark, flavourful gravy. Yeah, I'm a sucker for that. Ooh, salivating again.
The recipe calls for almost 1 bottle of red wine though. And Bob actually passed me a bottle of Grey label last night. The last round, we used a bottle I got from my company D&D. So imagined my jaw dropped when Bob told me the price of the bottle. I told him, you just made this stew costs 3 digit! (On top of the oxtail lar.)
We served the stew with home made mashed potatoes and garlic bread. Bob managed to find this great brand of garlic spread that's fragant but not over pungent with garlicky taste.
By the end of dinner, all the oxtail were gone, leaving lots of gravy and some vegetables. Can't bear to throw them out (usually what we did, since we always forgot what we kept in the fridge), I stored the leftover gravy in the fridge and told Bob I will eat that with spaghetti for dinner some day.
And today was the day. 10 mins job. Cooked spaghetti, microwaved the gravy and voila! Dinner's ready. I can eat this everyday! I was just thinking how perfect this will be if I have some Ikea meatballs.
This will be my number 1 recipe for beef stews. And I'm thinking of cooking this and freezing them in batches so when I need a quick meal fix, I can just pop them into microwave.
By the way, the recipe's here, if you wish to try. Add more shiitake mushrooms, they go perfect with the stew.
