Stracotto alla Fiorentina

 
 As you can see from our blog description, we are big fans of Italian food. We also  like to visit Italy as often as we can. One of Paulas favorite regions in Italy is Toscana. Following a visit there she picked up a cook book  with recepies collected from Toscana. The title of that book is Flavours from Toscana. The recepi for the Stracotto alla Fiorentina comes from this book, we made this dish with a few adjustments.

 Stracotto alla Fiorentina.

1.2 Kg beef (We used flank steak.)
0.5 dl  olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped in small peaces
2 carrots, chopped in small peaces
2 cloves of garlic (We used more, we really like garlic.)
50 grams dried boletes (Mushrooms, we did not have those.)
2 bay leafs
4 sprigs of fresh thyme
4 sprigs of fresh sage
3 dl red wine
1 liter beef stock
seasalt
blackpepper

Season the beef with salt and blackpepper. Frie quickly to brown the surface and then transfer the beef to a plate. Put the onion together with the garlic, mushrooms, carrot, celery and the herbs in a pot on the stove.  Poach at low temperature, blend for about 15 minutes. Add the wine to the pot and warm to get the alkohol out. Add the beef stock and blend. Then add the beef to the pot. Cover the pot with baking paper and a lid before putting it to the owen at 175 degrees for at least 3 hours. When ready take up the beef and slice it. Put the rest of the contents in the pot in a mixer and mix it. Heat the sauce and add spices if you like. Pore the sauce on top of the meat. Serve together with nice Italian country bread.

We served polenta together with this dish. We used a recepie from a Jamie Oliver book. We used flak steak as beef in this dish but you can use many different kinds of beef. Don´t forget to put in the celery, it gives very good flavoring to this dish. 

Per likes to bake and has found a nice and simple way of baking an Italian style country bread. Next we will but that recepi here.