Beef, Red Wine and Black Olive Stew...

I found this recipe the other day as I was searching for a completely different one...and decided it looked pretty great for a Thursday night dinner...why Thursday? Well I don't work on Thursdays, so have time to make a lovely slow cooked evening meal...which is what this looked like to me...
I wasn't actually too sure where it came from, other than Olive Magazine (I recognised the style of recipe...)...and as it isn't my recipe, I can't show the whole thing...but I did find the recipe for you online, here...and I will take you through what's in it and what to do...

For Beef, Red Wine and Black Olive Stew, you will need:


*600g Beef, preferably a cheaper cut like braising steak - diced about 2cm dice
*About 12 shallots - I cut mine in half or quarters as they were rather large!
*100g smoked streaky bacon - diced
*1 Tbsp plain flour
*200ml red wine
*200ml beef stock
*about 12 olives - nowhere near enough for us, so added 24 to mine!!!


What to do:

First of all you need to brown the meat, but do this in batches...you don't want to add too much as it will braise it by lowering the heat...your aim is to seal the meat...remove from the pan once sealed and then brown the shallots...
Once the shallots are browned remove from pan and fry off the bacon...once this is done...

...you can add it all back in again!!
You should now have beef, shallots and bacon in the pan...

The next step is to make the gravy/sauce...to do this you need to sprinkle the flour over the meat mix...give it a little stir to coat everything...
















now slowly add in the wine, stirring all the time, you should see the wine thickening a bit...now pour in the stock as well...give it a season, bring up to the boil and pop in the oven at gas 3-4/170c for 2 hours...the original recipe says to simmer on a very low heat for 2 hours...but I was too busy to watch it, so decided the oven would work just as well...








This is it after 2 hours in the oven...look how rich that gravy/sauce is looking...

To finish off I moved it to a low heat on the hob (I was available to watch it now!!)...so add in the olives, I ended up cutting mine in half...and simmer for another 30 minutes...

Serve with creamy mash and a green veg...steamed broccoli in our case last night!!


It also left us with some leftovers, enough for another large person...which I have popped in the freezer for another day.