The White Hat Guide to Beef Ragout a la Frankston South

Anna writes

“Dear White Hat Am missing your recipes. Here is one, albeit a bit winter for this time of year, but had a thought that maybe we could get a few shared recipes going with your fellow co-patriots. What do you think? Here is my offering – Beef Ragout a la Frankston South”

That sounds fine Anna, but one of the things we are fanatical about here at White Hat is quality control and so we will need to run all recipes through our White Hat Test Kitchen. I will go and set up the little glass bowls for the pre-measured ingredients, lay out some fresh tea towels and check that the photograph of Delia Smith is hanging perfectly vertical on the wall.

“This has been a favourite winter recipe that I have cooked for family and friends for a casual dinner, good to do on a spare lazy weekend arvo whilst you are doing other stuff, and it’s yummy with a bottle of red and good company.”

I went in search of the latter two items. I picked up a quite a nice red and also suggested to the rather attractive young lady at the bottle shop that the recipe also called for good company and would she care to join me? She declined my offer.

“Heat a heavy based pot and sauté a chopped onion in some butter and olive oil until translucent. Add a couple of finely chopped carrots and a few sticks of chopped celery and cook for a couple of minutes. Add about 500 grams of reasonably finely diced (not big chunks like in a curry) of beef, give it a few generous shakes of salt and cook it briefly until the beef has lost its raw colour. Add a glass of white wine . . “

Now, Anna, you could have told us at the start that this was going to be required. I returned to the bottle shop to buy a bottle of white. I repeated my invitation to the young lady behind the counter who again declined – this time in a more forceful and colourful manner

Now, where were we?

“Add a glass of white wine . . “

Maybe now is the time to remind our readers of White Hat Cooking Tip No.7 – the top half of a glass of wine is entirely unsuited for cooking purposes – be sure to only add the bottom half to the pot. It is up to you as chef to determine how to dispose of the top half but we would not want to advocate any form of wastage.

“Add a glass of white wine [which you now know means two half-glasses], turn the heat up a bit and give it an occasional stir until the wine has evaporated mostly. This is the most important bit to this recipe I think – reduce the heat a bit and add about 8 tbspns of full cream milk and I put in a good pinch of nutmeg and a bayleaf (have cooked it without and it still is yum). Once again come back and stir it occasionally until the liquid is evaporated. Add a standard can of nice Italian chopped tomatoes, give it a stir and put it on the lowest heat you can for 2 – 3 hours.”

Now Anna, we haven’t had a chance to use our little glass dishes and we did have to drape a tea towel over the photo of Delia so she couldn’t see us tasting a chunk of meat with our fingers – You’re right – it is yum.

“Season to taste and serve the sauce on your favourite pasta. I like it with penne and some fresh chopped parsley and shaved parmesan.
Regards Anna”

Thank you very much Anna. Like all traditional recipes I am sure that this has its regional variants and that Beef Ragout a la Frankston North contains secret ingredients that have been handed down for generations and are jealously protected from the southerners.