I wish you could smell my kitchen right now.
I put this on to cook first thing this morning, and now the aromas of star anise and ginger are all through the house.
It is another glorious day, but it started out cold – no frost this morning, but we must have come close. I’ve gotten two loads of laundry all-but dry on the line outside, and I’ve spent the afternoon painting Wet n Forget (a moss and mould remover) onto our deck. A few weeks ago our next-door-neighbour came to visit. She slipped on our deck – gouged a huge hole in her shin (seriously, I could see the bone!), and broke her shoulder in three places. She is 83 and one of the bravest and best women I know.
Fortunately she is healing really well and though she didn’t slip on a mossy bit, we thought we would clean the whole deck up as we don’t want another such accident. I had to do it at a time when the deck would dry before the cats walked on it. So, with Percy asleep in Rick’s chair and Yoshi still tucked under the blankets in our bed (having been silently, but comprehensively sick – on the bed – in the middle of the night(!) – thanks little mate ), I started painting the deck.
So it is really nice to come inside to be greeted by these delicious smells…
UPDATE: When I made this I made a mistake converting the recipe to be made in the slow-cooker… I know you have to use less liquid, so I reduced the amount of stock, but did NOT reduce the amount of soy sauce. I am an idiot – no WONDER it was so salty! I’ve updated the recipe – it should work now!….
2kg beef cut into biggish pieces – I used blade steak
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
45ml gluten free soy sauce (3 tbsp)
2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
4 star anise
4 cinnamon quills
1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper – or you could use Szechuan pepper
1 medium red chilli – split lengthways, I took the seeds out. If you like things a bit spicy you can leave them in.
Beef stock
Bung everything into the slow-cooker and stir it all up with an immaculately clean hand.
Cook it till you want it.
I will fish out the whole spices, thicken it, put some fresh home-grown coriander (cilantro) on top and serve it with some steamed rice and broccoli

The coriander and parsley are doing really well outside our back door
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