The Seasonal Larder: From North Aston Farm to Taco Night

By Emma Collen, Director & Food Addict at The Jericho Kitchen

There is something rather wonderful about taking a beautiful piece of locally reared beef and doing something completely unexpected with it.

This week we picked up some of the amazing braising steak from North Aston Farm & Dairy and, rather than heading down the traditional casserole route, we turned it into slow-cooked shredded beef tacos.

Braising steak is one of those cuts we absolutely love at The Jericho Kitchen. It doesn't need rushing. Give it a few hours with onions, garlic, tomatoes and warm spices and it transforms into the most delicious, tender beef that simply falls apart.

For our tacos, we browned the beef really well first, then slowly cooked it with onion, garlic, cumin, smoked paprika, oregano, a little chilli, tomatoes and stock until it could be pulled apart with two forks. We then returned the shredded beef to all those lovely cooking juices and let it become gloriously rich and sticky.

Pile it into warm tortillas with shredded cabbage, avocado, lime, coriander and perhaps a spoonful of soured cream, and you have a very different way of celebrating an exceptional local ingredient.

And that's something we're increasingly passionate about at The Jericho Kitchen: buying really good ingredients from the farms and producers around us and finding lots of different ways to cook with them.

Local beef doesn't have to mean Sunday lunch or beef stew. Sometimes it can mean taco night!

NORTH ASTON BRAISED BEEF TACOS

Serves 4-6

Use about 1kg North Aston braising steak. Brown it well in a little oil, remove from the pan, then soften 2 sliced onions. Add 3 chopped garlic cloves, 2 tsp ground cumin, 2 tsp smoked paprika, 1 tsp dried oregano and chilli to taste. Add a 400g tin of tomatoes and around 300ml beef stock, return the beef, cover and cook at 160°C fan for about 3 hours, until completely tender.Shred the beef, stir it back through the reduced cooking juices and serve with warm tortillas, lime, coriander and whatever crunchy, creamy accompaniments you fancy.

Good beef. Grown close to home. Cooked slowly. Eaten rather messily. Perfect.