A Cook-a thon

After I came home from visiting TBSITW I decided to start preparing the vegetables for a shin of beef, so I peeled and cut into small cubes 3 potatoes and 1 carrot, then placed them in a jug under cold water. The quantities are not exact and depend on what you have in the fridge or larder.

Yesterday I washed and cut into small pieces some very small celery and 2 leeks. I was going to add two onions but in the end felt that, with all the leeks I would use only one large one, peeled and diced.

I put all the vegetables in the bottom of a soup pot and boiled water to which I added two Kallo organic beef bouillon cubes. I then added enough of this stock mix plus some extra boiled water just to cover the vegetables.

On top of all this I placed the shin of beef which I had bought at a Farmers Market and frozen prior to defrosting it over the night before.

I then brought the whole thing to the boil and turned the hob down to 2 (the setting at which I cook vegetables), but turned it down to 1 to simmer away very gently for over 3 hours.

After I turned the hob off I left the pan to stand there while the hob was still hot.

Meanwhile I peeled, cored and sliced 8 cooking apples given to me by TBSITW and placed them in a heavy pan I added some sugar and a wine glass of water, brought it to a gentle boil and left it for about 20 minutes until the apples were falling.

Later on I rescued from the fridge T****’s Finest Streaky Pancetta a good week prior to its use by date and grilled all of it, leaving it to drain on kitchen paper before crushing it and freezing it for use in potato salad.

After all that I sat down to read Private Eye.

Today I have posted the shin recipe on my recipe blog.