The conference got me thinking about why I started my blog in the first place. There were a variety of reasons – including to meet new people (after Saturday, tick!), to try new things in the kitchen (tick), and to have a way of sharing favourite recipes (well, obviously, tick). I set out with a plan to focus on tasty, healthy, not-prohibitively-expensive, every day food. Because while I love cooking fancy food and putting dinner party menus together, I take great pleasure in rustling up simple but delicious food on weeknights. I also find that a lot of my friends want to cook this kind of food, but don’t have a lot of recipes to start with.

I’ve posted a few of these kind of recipes on the blog, but not as many as I’d like. The thing is, baking and sweet treats are a lot easier to photograph and blog about! When I’m cooking on a weeknight, we’re hungry and tired from work, and just want to eat, rather than set up a photo shoot while our dinner gets cold! Plus, the natural light’s dim by then, and photographing gets a bit trickier. You get the… picture.

But I’m setting these concerns aside. I’m going to try and focus back on these weeknight meal recipes, and so to start as I mean to go on, here is what we had for dinner tonight! It has red meat, red wine, red curry paste, and red lentils. And tomato paste. Which is also red. Yeah.

600g beef (I used rump steak; chuck or blade would also be good)
cooking oil spray
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 large carrot, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 courgette, sliced
1 cup red wine
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp red curry paste
1 Tbsp tomato paste
2 cups beef stock
1 Tbsp dried rosemary, or a couple of sprigs fresh
1/2 cup red lentils*

*You got me here, I actually meant to use red lentils, but discovered we had run out. Turns out brown lentils work too.

Preheat oven to 170º(C). If you’ve got a casserole dish that works on both stove top and in the oven, use that; if not, use a large frypan. Spray chosen vessel with cooking spray, and place over medium-high heat. Brown beef in two batches, and set aside.

Spray the pan with a little more oil, turn the heat down a little, and cook the onion, garlic, carrot, celery and courgette until softened. Add the red wine and simmer until the liquid reduces – by about a half. Then stir in the flour, curry paste and tomato paste until smooth. Add the beef stock and rosemary, and bring to the boil.

If you’re using a frypan, now is the time to transfer the mixture to an oven-proof casserole dish. Tip: I put my casserole dish in the oven while it preheats, so that you’re not putting your nice hot beef casserole into a cold dish and then waiting for it to heat up.

Place the casserole in the preheated oven and cook for an hour. Then add the lentils, cover again and cook for a further 30 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Season to taste and serve. I had mine plain but would be yummy with mashed potatoes or couscous, and some steamed greens.