Prog Chefs Unite!!!

The only slow cooking is sweating down the finely chopped onion with some crushed garlic in a little oil over a low heat until they are soft (maybe 5 minutes), then the heat is kicked up a notch and the sliced mushrooms added and sautéed until cooked through (perhaps another 5 minutes). Sometimes I add a splash of white wine or brandy here but that depends on the quality of the mushrooms and how much liquid comes out of them. While this is happening I slice the steak into thin strips no more than 5mm wide and season it salt, pepper, paprika and perhaps a little grated lemon zest if I have used lemon juice to sour the cream (having forgotten to buy crème fraîche). The mushrooms and onions are remove from the pan and the heat is whacked up to high before quickly searing the steak strips until they are browned but still rare to medium rare (this is fillet steak after all, but the same would apply to rib-eye or sirloin), this should take no more than 1 to 2 minutes. The pan is removed from the heat and the crème fraîche (or sour cream) added so that cooks-out in the residual heat of the pan before the mushrooms and onions are mixed back in with masses of chopped parsley. Personally I don't cook anything in cream, always adding it at the end of the cooking away from the heat so it doesn't split (curdle). Sometimes I throw in a few halved seedless grapes and very occasionally a few chopped gerkins (dill pickle) just to add a bit of variety. Served on a bed of white basmati and wild rice and dusted with more paprika.

I avoid using Worcestershire sauce unless I'm cooking a robust beef dish like osso-buco or ox-tail, it's too much of a flavour-thug even in small doses. 

I made salt-beef last week and it's been the best I've ever made - rather than the normal brisket of beef I used a shin of beef brined for 7 days (water, smoked-salt, muscavado sugar, salt-petre, juniper berries, black pepper corns and several bay leaves) and then slowly poached for 3 hours in a broth of carrot, celery, onion and bouquet garni. Allowed to cool and thinly sliced in a sandwich with lashings of piccalilli... yum  

I prefer egg-noodles to durum wheat pasta any day of the week - I'm not a great fan of cous-cous either but slowly coming around to it. For stroganoff I prefer the nutty flavour of wild rice but since that is not to everyone's taste I mix it with plain white (or brown) basmati.

Some of my favourite slow-cooks:

All chilli and ragù - most ground mince is generally made from the toughest meat there is so needs to be slow-cooked to render out the fat and collagen, this improves the flavour and consistency of the sauce. I avoid these cheaper minces when making burgers. A ragù only gets better with longer cooking, it never gets worse and can never be overcooked as far as I am concerned. I have recently been adding a single star-annise to the cooking, and for chilli occasionally I'll grate in some 70-80% cocao chocolate before serving. Unfortunately once I accidentally dropped a chunk of chocolate into the sauce and didn't bother to retrieve it, rather than melt it stayed as a solid lump that Debs discovered while eating the meal - she wasn't impressed.

Short ribs - seared in a hot skillet then brined for 24 hours before slow braising for 3 hours in red-wine, beef stock and passata. After cooking and removing the meat for slicing, the cooking broth is rapidly boiled so that it reduced by at least a half and a good knob of butter is stirred-in to produce a rich glossy sauce. Served with creamy mashed potatoes and seasonal veg.

Roast Flat Brisket - marinated in a dry-rub of smoked-salt, cayenne, paprika and chilli flakes for 24hrs, braised for several hours in beer and beef stock before quickly broiling to further enhance the flavour. The heat from the pepper and chilli generally kicks-in after the second or third mouthful and it is glorious.

Osso Buco - 1" slices of beef or pork shanks complete with shin-bone slowly cooked with the holy trinity of onion, celery and carrot in white wine until the bone-marrow dissolves into the sauce. (no tomatoes - should be cooked "bianco") - served topped with gremolata of lemon zest, crushed garlic and chopped parsley.

Puerco Pibil -basically I follow Robert Rodriquez recipe from Once Upon A Time In Mexico to the letter (except without the banana leaves as these are pretty rare in rural England) - I haven't perfected this yet but love the flavour of oranges and annato seeds with the pork.

Pulled-pork - marinated in a dry rub, slow cooked until it falls apart - served with apple sauce - 'nuff said.

Goulash - pork shoulder stewed in a broth of chilli, bell-pepper, paprika and onions with a splash of red-wine vinegar for many hours until the pork falls to pieces - served with soured cream stirred in at the last minute.

Coq-au-vin - chicken thighs (bone-in) seared in a skillet to render out the fat and colour the skin, slowly braised on the hob for 3-4 hours in a bottle of good quality table wine (red or white) with whole baby onions and small button mushrooms... I serve this with buttered jersey royal potatoes rather than rice and sometimes will cook the potatoes in with the chicken, onions and mushrooms.

Cassolette - confit duck legs, ham and sausage in a broth of beans with a herby breadcrumb crust - next to bouillabaisse this is the ultimate French stew for me. 

Gammon in Coke-Cola  - This sounds like utter madness but it works perfectly - I've tried using cider and apple juice instead but nothing beats the flavours produced by slow-poaching in cola. I guess you could use Pepsi or Dr Pepper if you must.

Tagine - there are no rules to a tagine just as there is no fixed recipe for a ras el hanout spice-mix though I prefer lamb, dried apricots and the aforementioned ras el hanout.

...I have yet to cook beer-can chicken, mainly because I buy my beer in bottles not cans.

I know what you mean, much of what is served up in restaurants borders on unpleasant. Stews in generally remind me too much of bland school dinners and school goulash was the worse of those.

A good goulash should be deep and smoky and even though tomatoes form the base of the sauce, it should taste peppery not of tomato.

I use a couple of large chilli peppers, de-seeded and finely chopped, several (3 or 4) fresh bell-peppers, again de-seed and sliced and a jar of grilled peppers (skin removed). You can grill your own peppers but the preserved ones add a certain je ne sais quoi to the final dish - I tend not to chop them up too much and leave them in large chunks. All these peppers are cooked together with some finely sliced red onion, a tin of plumb tomatoes and a lot of paprika for ten to fifteen minutes. I'll use equal measures of hot and sweet paprika, but it has to be smoked - at least one heaped tablespoonful is the minimum, two is ideal. Because I don't like eating pieces of cooked plumb tomato I will blitz them in a blender with the paprika before using them but most people prefer to use them straight out of the tin. For seasoning I'll use fennel seeds (the aniseed flavour works really well) and whatever fresh herbs are growing in the garden (thyme, marjoram or oregano) - never dried even though they can be used because of the slow cook. Once the peppers and tomato stock has had its 10 minutes pre-cooking, add the pork and use just enough water to cover the meat, stir in two tablespoons of red-wine vinegar and put in a medium oven for at least 3 hours. When the pork can be easily pulled apart it is cooked, but you cannot overcook it so there is no point in preparing the accompaniments (rice or whatever) until the goulash has reached perfection. 

The result should be quite fiery but not so hot as it rips the skin from your throat as you eat it, hence the need for as you say, a good glob of soured cream. 

I'm hungry now and it's been a while since I cooked a goulash, If I wasn't working away from home next week it would certainly be on the mid-week menu now.