Beef and mushroom stroganoff

I’d say my grip on life, at times, has been pretty tight. You know that thought process of, the harder you hold on, the more control you have to make things happen the way you want? It’s funny, that it’s not until I’ve loosened my grip that it has actually allowed many more wonderful things to evolve by being open at the hands of others.

So this week was a test! When the ‘C’ word gets mentioned in a negative context (and of course I am talking about ‘carbs’!) my instinctive response to this was: grip hard! I could feel my Italian lineage recoil at the prospect of a limited pasta intake, and my Tuesday night bailout of pizza and salad go up in smoke in the pizza oven. (Ha just kidding, I don’t really have a pizza oven….but….)

But what if I loosened my grip on this slightly, what comes to the fore then? Slowly but surely, as the grip loosens, I sense my bookshelves reshuffle and make room for a new cookbook. Of course! I’ve noticed on Twitter recently a certain Tom Kerridge has been getting a lot of love for his Dopamine Diet..which is basically low carb tasty food…now a chef who has lost 11 stone and likes to eat tasty food…I am willing to spend £7 on that!

SO this is where this week’s inspiration has come from. I was making a tutorial on how to cook steak for a project that I am working on (#HealthyhappyYOU)…and it was sat there till dinner and then it came to me: Beef Stroganoff. Now I don’t find the book particularly fuss free, so I created my interpretation of the recipe to make it fuss free and delicious….which is what we are all about here! And you know, in the end, grip loosened, we served it with brown basmati rice, and it seems the carb ban may already be lifted: For now. Cookbooks 1-No carbs 0

Let me know what you think of my fuss free Stroganoff in the Fuss Free Foodie Facebook group or take a look behind the scenes, watch tutorials and see food reviews on the Fuss Free Foodie page. See my fuss free life in pictures on Instagram or what I’m tweeting on Twitter. Don’t forget to keep seeing FFF in your feed, keep giving a little like, comment or share on FB or post to your timeline, tweet or pin with the buttons below! Lisa x

Beef Stroganoff
Serves 2

300g mushrooms, whole if small or into quarters, if larger
170g fillet, sirloin steak or fillet tails (cheapest option)
1 tbsp butter
1 onion, sliced half moons
2 garlic cloves, crushed or finely chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 stock cube
500ml beef stock (leave 100ml for later)
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp smoked paprika (I used hot, feel free to use sweet or a combo of 2)
3-4 tbsp crème fraîche or sour cream (full fat) (I used 4 as it was HOT!!)
30g gherkins, diced
2 tbsp/1/4 lemon juice
2 tbsp, parsley
Olive oil, salt and pepper

1. First, in a heavy sauce pan, cook the steak. Get the pan hot on a medium to high. Rub the steak with oil and season with a little salt and pepper.
2. When the pan is hot, put the steak in and cook for about 2 minutes on one side (if the steak is about 2cm thick to be cooked rare) and then flip over and add the butter. Baste the steak and cook for a further 2 minutes. Take out of the pan and rest on a plate.
3. In the remaining butter fry the mushrooms on a high heat to extract the water, and get some good colour on them. Season and remove from the pan when they have shrunk and not spongy.
4. On a medium-low heat, add a drizzle of olive oil and fry the onions slowly for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add in the garlic and fry for 2 more minutes. Crumble in the stock cube, add the paprika and stir for 2 minutes. Then add the tomato puree and cook out for 2 more minutes.
5. Add 400ml beef stock, mustard, stir and bring the pan up the boil, then reduce to a fairly fast simmer. Reduce the sauce until it is rich and thick and reduced to about a 1/3 in size. Stir in the crème fraîche or sour cream and season with salt and pepper.
6. Add the beef and mushrooms into the pan along with any meat juices. Warm through for a minute or 2, then add the lemon and gherkins. Serve. (If you feel the sauce is a bit too thick add a drizzle of the extra beef stock to loosen.)
7. In the end, I served with so brown basmati rice….healthy carbs aren’t all that bad.

Forget the Fuss….

Make a mushroom stroganoff, add at least 5-600g of other types of mushrooms. I would advise if you are doing mushrooms stroganoff to fry off your mushrooms to gain colour, flavour and extract the water from them so your sauce is a success

So what did I do differently to TK? He uses double the amount of meat as he is trying to bulk the meal out with the protein. So if you wanted to do carb free double up the meat. I prefer to serve with a portion of brown basmati rice for balance