November 2014

Tried and tested

I made this game stew for the second time, and it was again great.

The original is from the Weg magazine and is in Afrikaans.

• 40 g dried mushrooms
• ½ cup warm stock
• 1 kg meat in 4 cm cubes. I used gemsbok.
• ½ cup flour
• 2 onions
• garlic
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 cups stout (I used Guinness the first time and homebrew the second)
• 1 tin cherry tomatoes, drained (reserve sauce)
• 2 tablespoons Worcester
• 2 tablespoons soy
• 4 sprigs thyme

Chop the dried mushrooms and soak in hot water or stock (I added the stock powder later). Do this before prepping the meat and onions.

Coat meat with flour and brown in oil (I skipped the flour, it makes a mess and I am yet to be convinced). Keep meat warm.

Brown onion and garlic. Add sugar, add meat, fry for five minutes (I added the stock powder to the onion mix with the sugar)

Add beer, tomatoes, Worcester, soy, thyme, mushrooms.

Cook for an hour or so. Add the tomato sauce if it looks dry.

Serve with rice.

I didn’t bother with Weg’s baby onions at the end, but it sounds like a good idea.

 

The Sixth Stage of Grief Is Retro-computing

Moore’s law, the speed at which technology moves forward, means that the digital past gets smaller every year. So this is what is left are the tracings of hundreds of people, or thousands, who, 20, 30, 40 years ago found each other and decided to fabricate all this…digital stuff. Glittering ephemera. They left these markings and moved on.

Who wouldn’t want to go back 20 years—to drive again into the office, to sit before the whiteboard in a beanbag chair, in a place of warmth and clarity, and give it another try?

Go read.