OK, so on occasion, I cook a bit… but I’m more ‘self taught’ than classically trained – so I tend to just make something with whatever is lying around.
Most of the time, it works out; on the odd occasion, I knock it out of the park.

The problem with the way I cook, is that I never remember what the hell I did to get there – so my meals suffer from ‘never the same taste twice’.

Last night, I made a fantastic hearty beef and mushroom broth that I wouldn’t mind making again at some point – so this is my attempt at documenting the recipe…

2 x Large sweet onions (sliced)
1lb x mushrooms (roughly chopped into 1/4 or 1/6)
Butter (enough to fry up the onions)
A tsp of thyme
3 or 4 bay leaves
A handful of chopped cilantro
A couple of garlic cloves, chopped
Salt & Pepper
General purpose flour (about 1/4 cup per liter of bouillon)
A fistful of pearl barley
Beef bouillon ("Better than Bouillon" preferably)

 

• Fry up the onions, garlic, thyme and bay leaves in the butter until they start to caramelize and begin to turn brown (about 25 minutes)
• Remove the bay leaves
• Sift and slowly stir in the flour into the onions
• Continue cooking the onions (and stirring occasionally) for another couple of minutes
• Bung everything else into the beef broth and put on a low rolling boil for about an hour

And thats it.  I didn’t say it was hard!