Baby Cuisine - Weensy Steak and Chips

The Other Half and I (certain elements - you know who you are RM - may take the time to appreciate my lovely use of grammar) get a bit excited about a good, hearty steak. Ever since our very first holiday in Nice, where I believe we each consumed 6 1/2 French cows of moderate girth over the course of a long weekend. Well, it'd be moo-de (ie rude, but with a moo in? Tenuous? Doesn't really work? Fair dos) not to, in the epicentre of steakery that is La France. I believe I'm correct in saying that 99.4% of restaurants in Nice serve steak frites avec vert... pepper sauce (not sure what French for pepper sauce is. La sauuuce p'perrrrr? Probably) and its likely all crap in comparison to what our finely tuned taste buds are attuned to these days. Now we're total grown up with careers and stuff and that and dead posh and everything, eh?

Fair enough, one can't quite achieve the same effect when cooking for a baby - I can't imagine The Bairn chomping through a medium rare bit of Aberdeen Angus fillet, quashed down with a tiny glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. Aw how cute! But no. With 2 teeth and an infantile weeny liver, it's a decidedly mushier and most certainly non-alcoholic version of my favourite meal ever.

Make this most palatable to your baby by slow cooking the beef - make it a day you fancy a steak pie or casserole and you can all eat together. Do you know what? It's really closer to a stew. I'm kidding myself a bit.

Ingredients

Pack of diced stewing steak

Tablespoon of flour

A carrot chopped

An onion chopped

Parsley

Bay leaf

Black pepper

Paprika

Olive oil

A medium sized waxy potato

Baby ketchup as previously blogged (I'll try and figure out how to link it in...)

1. Parboil Sliced carrot and chipped potatoes for about 8 minutes.
2. Put paprika, black pepper, flour into a freezer bag. Add diced steak and shake it all up.
3. Fry beef in olive oil and a bit of butter if you fancy, til just coloured.
4. Put in slow cooker (crockpot if you're in the states) with carrot, parsley, rest of seasoning from the bag, and a bay leaf; cover with hot water.
5. Cook on low heat for... Aaaaages. 6 hours if possible - so really soft for you Bairns. Pre heat oven to 200 degrees C for chips.
6. Meanwhile, give it several hours, then CHIPS (American? You might call them fries. But you're wrong. They are clearly chips). I warn you, these are BETTER than oven chips so you may want to make lots for yourself. Put parboiled CHIPS in a bowl with plenty paprika, maybe a wee touch of garlic and/or black pepper if your bambino can handle it. A glug of olive oil. Mix it all up.
7. Spread evenly over a hot baking tray, and bake for about 20-25 minutes. If they're not nice and soft by then, stick them back in. They need to be really soft and fluffy inside!
8. Take chips out to cool - takes a good while. We may all have experienced the heartbreak and tongue-burnt devastation from trying that chip just too soon. But better it's your tongue that gets frazzled than your lovely little smasher, so ALWAYS TEST IT ON YOURSELF FIRST!
9. Remove a few nice soft bits of steak from the slow cooker, some onion and carrot - check you've not accidentally removed the sneaky wee bay leaf too - and whizz it all up. If your meat's reeeeally tender, you could just mash it all with a fork for older babies.
10. Serve with defrosted baby ketchup!

And now I'm craving cattle again. Moooooo!

Posted with Blogsy