My son had three other fifteen year old boys come for supper on Friday and I wanted to make something that would appeal particularly to them as well as being pleasant for the rest of us to eat. He suggested a barbeque but the weather has been atrocious and it just wasn't feasible. I don't really know who it is that thinks a BBQ is the easy option anyway. I find it a palaver, but am prepared to have them if the weather is fabby and it becomes just part of the day spent outside. My husband and I were just back from Belgium and had brought beer and chocolate with us. I ended up making a Carbonnades Flamandes and a Belgian Chocolate Cake.
I had the butcher give me the beef in one piece as we had had this dish in Belgium and the pieces of meat had been large and surrounded by a smooth, very dark sauce. I wanted to recreate this. I trimmed all fat off the meat before cutting it into 4 - 5 cm cubes. For 7 of us, I'd bought 3 lbs. shoulder steak. This was well-seasoned, then coated in flour then sealed in very hot butter in a frying pan, a few pieces at a time, so that it went very dark brown. As they were browned, I put the pieces in a casserole dish. In the frying pan I added a small onion that had been sliced very thinly and allowed to turn dark brown without burning. The pan was then deglazed using dark 'brune' Leffe beer and altogether 700 mls. was added to the casserole dish. This was brought to the boil, a tablespoon or so of redcurrant jelly, three sprigs of thyme from the garden and a dried bay leaf were added. Once on the boil, the dish was put in a very low oven (the bottom oven of my 2-oven Aga) for four hours. As the dish was removed and tasted, it needed something and I added about 25 g. of dark chocolate! I think that did the trick! I removed the pieces of meat and the bay leaf and whizzed the sauce in a liquidiser to make it as smooth as possible. It wasn't quite thick enough and I added about a tablespoon of cornflour, mixed with a little cold water. The texture then was just right. It was served with very white creamed potatoes, peas - for the boys - and organic broccoli, with its dark leaves still on. Lovely. Accompanying, as per the Belgian-way, was a dish of apple compote, made from a mix of Bramley and Cox apples, sweetened with some sugar and a clove added while cooking.
The chocolate cake was made using a super recipe I found once on the Internet - under Anna's Aga Recipes - my favourite chocolate recipe. It was sandwiched with a Vienna buttercream and then a ganache was poured over the top, bits of it dripping down the side. The ganache was made from 150g. dark Belgian chocolate, 150 ml. double cream, a teaspoonful of unsalted butter and a teaspoonful of vanilla essence. I had some fresh cherries in a dish to go with the cake. I made a sugar syrup first then added the cherries while it was hot and just set them to one side. The cherries softened a little and the stones were easy to remove. My daughter thinks the cake was fabulous as it was and everybody seemed to love it, but I think if I were to do the same thing again, I'd fill the cake with whipped cream mixed with the chopped fresh cherries. I thought the buttercream was a little too sweet.
There were Belgian chocolates for after and I have to say the meal was great fun, lots of funny stories were told and everybody enjoyed the food.
