Cooking up a retro Russian dish for online food festival sessions
During my trip away in the caravan these last few weeks, I have been busy in the kitchen.
Even though it is such a tiny space, it is still possible to cook great food. One of the companies that I work with sometimes is Great British Food Festival. All the festivals have been cancelled this year so we have been holding what we call Cook-along online YouTube sessions. The last one was last Wednesday, when I led the show with a cook-along live from my caravan.
It was John’s birthday so I chose a dish that sounds a bit fancy! What we cooked was beef stroganoff. Stroganoff is a bit retro, popular in the ’70s. It is very easy to make and, if you are vegetarian, just leave out the beef and add lots more mushrooms, perhaps spinach.
I set the tripod and phone on top of my little sink unit and pointed it at the hob. We had a good bit of banter with the other cooks and chefs joining in. The dish took about half an hour to make. I served ours with creamy mashed potato but sometimes I use tagliatelle or rice.
I cut two sirloin steaks into strips and put them in a Ziploc bag with a tablespoon of oil. After rubbing it all around in the bag, I seared the meat in a dry frying pan. For good measure, I sploshed in a bit of brandy then removed the meat and juice to a plate and sprinkled with a tablespoon of plain flour. Back to the pan, I added a knob of butter and splash of oil, cooking down a chopped onion.
I added 400g of thickly sliced mushrooms and a few cloves of crushed garlic. I let the onions and mushrooms simmer until they gave off their juices and wilted down.
I added 200ml beef stock, salt and pepper, 1 tbs Dijon mustard and teaspoon of smoked paprika and let it all reduce.
Then I returned the beef to the pan and continued to cook for a few more minutes until the sauce was thickened. Then I added about 150g of crème fraiche and stirred it through.
So very delicious! Stroganoff is a Russian recipe, the only one I can think of,so perhaps I need to do some research on what Russians like to eat. More recipes on www. karenwrightbakes.co.uk site.