Beef, beer, herbs and a school reunion

Last Saturday was already a positive day by the time I'd had a lie in and been to have my swede cut at the local barbers. The reason was that my dog and I had spent Friday night with great company who had made my weekend start in the best way possible.

After walking the dog in muggy heat it was time to prepare a fortifying tea. It needed to be fortifying because I was heading out that evening to a school reunion at my local where plenty of beer was going to flow freely.

I don't eat a lot of meat partly because when I still lived at home my parents were largely vegetarian and as a result I've discovered a wide range of vegetarian recipes that mean I don't need to eat a lot of meat. However once in a while I find the need to cook a meat dish as I think meat gives you much-needed protein that is not always available in vegetarian dishes.

I therefore decided to stew some beef chunks in herbs with ale. As the re-union I was going to was, without giving my age away too much, the class of 1999 some suitable nineties music was in order while I prepared my meal. I put Suede's 1997 effort Coming Up on the player, although not quite as good as their first two albums it does have some excellent melodic moments like "Trash" "Filmstar" and the "The Beautiful Ones" to name but three.

I took a box of beef chunks and fried them for five minutes turning them regularly until they were brown on each side. I also prepared a herb dressing comprised of diced Thyme, Purple Sage, Parsley and Black Pepper that I mixed in a measuring jug with some sunflower oil and half a pint of Tetley Bitter. All the herbs were plucked straight from my back garden.

I put the beef into a glass ovenproof dish with olive oil covering the bottom and then spread evenly over the beef the herb and ale mixture. I then cooked the beef in the oven at Gas Mark 4 for two hours. After two hours I took it out of the oven and turned each of the beef chunks. I then added another half pint of bitter to stop the beef getting too try and then cooked it in the oven for another hour on Gas Mark 3.

After an hour I served it with some steamed green beans, asparagus and butternut squash chunks. A good friend of mine, who was jetting to Vienna the following day, shared the dish with me and as with me it fortified him for an excellent night catching up with him and another close friend as well as meeting some wonderful people who it was great to see back in my life.

Well done, but still tender enough with plenty of herbs and bitter to make this beef come high up in the flavoursome charts