Baked Custard Hearts with Two Fruits | home | Strawberry Clafoutis

Braised Beef, Green Beans and Hand made Rigatoni with Ricotta Pesto Sauce.

Being Sunday, it’s the Daughter’s night to cook. However, since she had the forethought to mention this at a reasonable time of the afternoon, I suggested we do something that required a longer cooking time. Thus we pulled out The Silver Spoon to see what we could do.
Since I had 6 Oyster Blade steaks in the freezer, we settled on Braised Beef (page 786). There was of course one small setback, I don’t have a braising dish. So I suggested we casserole it in the oven, then braise in a fry pan before serving. This worked extremely well.

!/recipes/images/BB_GB_RwRPS.jpg!

h2. Ingredients.

h3. The Braised Beef

* 6 Oyster Blade Steaks
* 75 g of butter
* 1 onion, finely chopped
* 2 carrots, sliced (about 2 to 3 mm thick)
* 1 celery stick, finely chopped
* 175 ml of red wine (we used Cabernet Shiraz)
* 1 tin of roma tomatoes
* 1 Tablespoon of tomato pasta
* 2 cups of beef stock
* salt and pepper

h3. The Ricotta Pesto Sauce

* 25 g of butter
* 1 Tablespoon of flour
* some milk
* 250 g of Ricotta
* a splash of white wine
* 1 Tablespoon of Pesto (see this recipe)
* 1 clove of garlic
* one quarter teaspoon of salt

h3. The Pasta

* 200g of fresh rigatoni (see This recipe for the pasta dough recipe)
!/recipes/images/Rigatoni.jpg!
* half a saucepan of water
* 2 or 3 teaspoons of salt

h3. Beans

* green beans (fresh or frozen)
* a little water for steaming

h2. Method.

h3. The Braised Beef

In a large fry pan, melt half the butter and sauté the onions, celery and carrots for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Tip the vegetables into a casserole dish greased with a little olive oil.
Now melt the other half of the butter in the fry pan and turn up the heat. Sear the steaks on both sides, then add the wine and reduce for 2 minutes. Remove the meat and place in the casserole dish.
Continue to reduce the wine until about half the volume left in the pan. Add the canned tomatoes, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Break up the tomatoes, stir frequently and reduce until half it’s volume.
Pour the tomato wine sauce over the meat and then pour the stock into the middle of the casserole dish (being careful not to wash the tomatoes off the meat).
Place the casserole dish in the oven, uncovered and bake for 2 hours at 175 C.

Once the 2 hours is up, and the beef feels tender when poked with a fork, pour the entire casserole into a large fry pan and braise until the liquid is thickened (approx. 10 mins on fairly high heat). If you time it correctly this will occur just as the pasta, beans and sauce are also done.

20 minutes before the beef is ready, boil the pasta in salted water until done, and start the sauce.

h3. The Ricotta Pesto Sauce

In a saucepan, melt the butter and combine with the flour to form a roux. Add a little milk and combine, repeat a couple of times until the roux is pasty and white-ish. Remove from the heat and stir in the Ricotta, wine and Garlic crushed with the salt. When combined, return to stove, on low heat and stir. The Ricotta will eventually become a creamy paste. Stir in a little milk if it gets too thick. Add the pesto and stir in thoroughly.
Continue to stir over low heat until the pasta and beef are done.

The beans can be steamed in a microwave steamer on high for 4 minutes just before serving.

posted to Italian,Recipes @ 11:29 pm

Did you like this recipe? You might also like:

Sorry, comments are closed

Baked Custard Hearts with Two Fruits | home | Strawberry Clafoutis