Day #2 of attempting replicate cuisine experienced in Belgium was an educational failure. All the recipes I could find for Flemish Beef Stew involved a Crock-Pot, which I do not have, so I cobbled together about six different online beef stew recipes and slow cooked my beef and beer for three hours. The result was a gorgeous dark thick sauce with beef and mushrooms.
The problem came, I believe, from using Voll-Damm, a Spanish beer with a slightly bitter aftertaste. Three hours of boiling increased the power of the aftertaste by an order of magnitude. The first three seconds of each spoonful of stew was WONDERFUL, but it was followed by a disgusting grimace-forcing bitterness. I made it through just over half of my bowl before needing about a liter of Coca-Cola to wash out the bitterness.
Oh well. I’m not deterred. I’ll dust myself off and get back on the stew horse before the end of the year.
