It is Monday and the butcher’s is closed because they open on Sunday morning. Go figure.
I had abandoned buying meat at the supermarket because it is better from the butcher and, surprisingly, often even cheaper. However, when I saw a kilo of beef at the supermarket at 5 euros, with the mention “Limousin” for the provenance, I fell for the offer.
At first I thought I would make a stew, but the weather was too warm for that (and that explained perhaps the discount price as the central meat buying department had misjudged the weather). I opted for a beef soup and bought some organic vegetables.
I sliced the beef and added 1.5 litres of hot water to a large pan and started to take off the scum that rose to the surface. Then I added some star aniseed, kaffir lime leave bay leaf, mixed herbs, pepper corns and some cloves. I added some celery salt as well.
I cut up the vegetables – an onion, a parsnip, several carrots and leek. I set some diced carrot to the side and added the rest to the pan and let it boil for an hour.
Then I added four sliced cloves of garlic, the rest of the carrot, and continued cooking.
The question was what to serve with the beef soup. I did have dried noodles but I also had some potatoes that needed to be used. So I cut a few in cubes and added it to the soup. I also added several spoonfuls of barley and cooked another 20 minutes.
After that, I removed the herbs and cloves, aniseed etc and took out the leeks and large chunks of carrot that I had used for the stock. Then I added a large spoonful of “sambal” chilli sauce and served. Very nice.