Dazz Switalla Flavour Secrets No.1 The Strand Chef www.no1thestrand.co.nz

The not-so-smartphone gave me reminder the other day about attending a mid-winter feast down country among the snow.

As I was unable to attend, I can only imagine the loads of food being consumed – and in front of a roaring fire and snow falling outside. A lot of companies and families have a Christmas-themed mid-winter feasts – what is all that about? Maybe it's just a conspiracy theory but I think it's just a ploy by the big multinationals to use up the well-preserved Christmas puddings, and frozen turkeys that food warehouses have stored since Christmas.
Then I got thinking about my favourite winter foods, which you can make in bulk and feast on for several nights. The all-time favourite is a beef stew I had as a child. It was cooked in a pressure cooker with dumplings.
Thankfully, once again as I'm writing this, the sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky.
So it's hard to be cooking up a typical chilly mid-winter comfort food.
But as the temperature plummets at night, the beef stew and blue cheese dumplings recipe for this week will
go down a treat.

Beef casserole with blue cheese

Casserole ingredients
¼ cup olive oil
sea salt and black pepper
1kg diced beef rump or blade steak
1 large brown onion, diced
4-6 cloves finely sliced garlic
2 medium size swedes, peeled and diced
2 large carrots, diced
4 celery sticks
2-3 bay leaves
1 glass red wine
2L water
1L beef stock
3-4 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup chopped flat leaf parsley

Dumplings ingredients
2 cups plain four
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
½ tsp cracked black pepper
2 tsp baking powder
100g Danish blue cheese
½ cup chopped flat leaf parsley
1 ½ cups of milk

Method
First, in batches, seal off the diced beef in a heavy bottom pot seasoning as you go. Place in a casserole dish or slow cooker. Sauté the onion in the same pot, adding a little more oil if needed. When soft, add the garlic then the other vegetables and cook for a few minutes. Add to the casserole dish and add red wine. Add the water and bring to the boil, add beef stock; and simmer for one and a half hours.
Make the dumplings by sifting the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder together in a bowl. Crumble in the blue cheese, add chopped parsley then stir in the milk to form stiff dough. Take out about one litre of stock from the casserole dish and heat in a wide saucepan. Place large dollops of dumpling mix in pan; and cover and cook on a gentle simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Serve dumplings on top of casserole. This is when you can add rest of pan juices, Worcester sauce and chopped parsley.