lemons and lemonades

When life hands you lemons..make lemonades..or somethings else! My little sister is here in Palawan for the holidays, wanted her to try my version of beef bourguinon. Yeah, the reluctant cook in me wants to show off, hahaha.  So bought the meat the day before, trimmed it, cut it to size and put it in the freezer for cooking the next day. While we were feasting on a breakfast of lamayo (fish marinated in vinegar, pepper and garlic), rellenong bangus and garlic rice, I remembered the beef and put it out to thaw . Was planning to cook it for dinner. Was happily going about the morning activities and a little before lunch I remembered I ran out of red wine! disaster if youre making beef bourguinon. Went to the kitchen to ask the helper if she can go to the liquor store and get a bottle..thats when I saw the or did not see what I needed to see. The thawing beef is MIA!!!!! I asked where it might be, thats when I was informed she already boiled it cause she assumed I'd be making beef nilaga.uh oh! Thought  ok, I can work with that, make beef nilaga instead of bourguinon, only to find out that she boiled the beef without any seasonings, no nothing, just water. Hmmmm..

As I was racking my brain trying to think of something to do with the beef, the boss said" just make it into some other sort of stew". yeah, ok lets do that.

To my surprise, boss said he wanted to help. I drained the beef and kept the stock for later, put onions on the board for chopping and asked boss to peel the carrots. The bratty boss said, can I just sear the beef? Peeling carrots is for sissies! hahahaha

Anyway, here is what we made out of the boiled beef:

Ingredients:
1 kilo stewing beef , cut into 1 inch squares and boiled till tender, keep the stock
1 400gm can whole tomatoes
1 250gm pack of tomato sauce
1 small can of liver spread
3 medium size potatoes, cut approx same size as beef
2 medium carrots, cut approx same size as beef
1 tsp oregano powder
2 medium size onions, chopped
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp dired rosemary
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp dried basil, crushed
1/4 c cream
salt
pepper
olive oil
beef cubes (optional)

1. Heat the pan with olive oil. Sear meat on all sides, be carfeful not to over crowd the pan to get even cooking. Take the meat off the pan and set aside.
2. Saute the onions in the same pan, adding a little olive oil if necessary. When it is softened, add the flour. Saute the flour until just slightly brown, do not burn the flour.
3. Add the whole tomatoes and let it simmer for a few minutes, add the tomato sauce and the spices.
4. Add the beef, carrots and potatoes. Bring to a boil, add some of the beef stock to get the amount of sauce you want. You can add beef cubes if you like. Let it simmer for 20 mins, stirring once in a while to make sure nothing is sticking in the bottom.
5. Add the cream and liver spread, let it simmer for another 10 minutes.
6. Enjoy!

We ended up with a really nice dinner, creamy, spicy and filling. It taste sorta like beef caldereta, but not exactly beef calderata. It was yumyum!

Thanks lemons and lemonades!