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Red wine beef stew

Last weekend I cooked a nice beef stew with a red wine sauce. However, my cooking technique is based on a trial-error method, so dont expect any expert chef tricks.

I would like to post some picture, but we ate everything… so no pic today.

Ingredients

For 2:

• Beef meat sliced in dices a bit bigger than a couple of fingers. The quantity depends on how much you are going to eat while you cook… but would be enough with 200-300g per person.
• One onion
• One carrot
• One of those buillon pills
• Mushrooms
• One or two potatoes
• Tomato soup
• Red wine

Cooking it

First of all, we will warm around half finger of olive oil in a 3l pan. Once it is warm, we will “seal” the meat dices, that is, frying it fastly so it get some roasted borders trying to avoid the meat loosing all it’s juices.

Once sealed, we let the oil cool a bit and then we start frying slowly the onion. Once it’s starting to look golden, we add the carrot slices, mushrooms and the buillon. Move it for avoiding it getting burnt. After a little bit, add the tomato soup, removing as well and then add the meat (including the juice you will have in the plate you used for storing it) and the potatoes.

About potatoes, it’s important that when we are cutting it, we dont cut them fully with a knife, it’s better starting cutting and once half it’s cut, tearing that part off. I dont know the physical matter about it, but it helps for having a more dense sauce (I guess some matter of more fibers broken and some starch related stuff)

Then we just add until covering with a mix of water and red wine. I use to use around 50% water, 50% wine. With more wine the sauce tends to be so strong and with less not tasting so much.

We cover the pan and we let the alcohol evaporate and we let it boil until the sauce it’s dense, stirring it from time to time.

Too big to fail

Last weekend before going to Prague i’ve bought a book with my Kindle that I have been trying to read for a while: Too Big to Fail.

In this book, the New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in detail and in a comprehensible way about the internals of the crisis that made the world’s financial system teetering.

It is really interesting reading how the main actors never thought what it was starting and thought that the system was the most secure system ever after diversifying the risks, what it leaded to a domino effect that ended in the bankrupt not only of investment banks, but traditional banks and insurance companies worldwide.

It is interesting as well the linking with politics and the causes and consecuences of politic decissions, letting companies fall.

For everyone interested in economy and want to go a bit deeper in the causes of this crisis, this is your book.

Cost assignment models

We are studying lately two cost assignment models at school and I wanted to explain them a bit. They are the VBC and ABC models. The first one, Volume Based Costing is product oriented and all the costs are assigned to it. In the other hand, the Activity Based Costing assigns costs depending on the activity.

But, lets illustrate it. Goal: make your bag.

VBC: we need 5 underpants, 5 socks, 5 tshirts and one jersey so no one can say “I told you so” if weather is crap and we are freezing. We take each item from the wardrobe just as we find them and we are done. Making bag cost, 5 minutes. But some exceptions, most guys make bags like this.

ABC: for some reason, most girls has the need of wearing all the clothes combinations needed for every moment: going out for a drink, go flirting, romantic dinner, macdonalds dinner, take the dog out… even if they dont have a dog. This model would be the optimal for them, as it would let them standarize each option and would let them making the bag in a way closer to a production line instead artisan manufacturing.

AN: this is just an illustrative example. Actually, there’s no human able of predicting what would use one of those girls as their unpredictable mood changes would have a direct influence on it.

It seems my gf is going to be a biker

Fernando told me in my last post something about why I was being so boring lately. Gotta admit that for some reason I was talking lots of bullshit about business, computing future, and lots of boring things that aren’t so usual in my web, so… yeh, he’s right. Let’s go back to the older style…

Last weekend Hanneke came to Spain again. I was a bit worried about weather as my migraines were prediting another crappy rainy weekend and well, we dont have so many things here, but at least: crappy politicians, nice wine and sun. And she didnt know the spanish sun yet…

We went to Sigüenza, were I cooked the worst maccheroni ever. ME! The macheronni king!!! Don’t know what happened, but I overboiled them or something, but they sucked… I’m glad she’s a so well educated cute girl and she didn’t complain… I think i’m going to like my fam in law in a couple of weeks if the result of their education is this great girl :) Not everything was so good as I planned going to Sigüenza by bike, but was a bit cold for that and, well, maybe was better, as one hour and a half of bike trip for someone not used to that, would be a pain in the ass… but I drove my bike with her as passenger around Madrid and it seemed she liked it. Like… SO much!!! That much that on sunday I tried to teach her a bit how to drive (in the garage, ofc, i’m not THAT crazy…) and she rocked!!! She looked so comfortable over it, even if she didnt drive one ever and she isn’t used to its weight!

So don’t know why… but I have the feeling that some day she’s going to get a license + a bike xD (I hope a ducati at least… )

About the rest of the weekend… just can say that was one of our GREAT weekends.