Beef, butternut and potato bake with ginger, garlic and turmeric

This recipe uses leftover beef stew that I made last Saturday. As often happens when I cook, there was too much. On Sunday, I turned the leftover stew (after removing a large round bone – it was beef shin stew) into a second supper – a version of cottage pie, using caramelised butternut and a mixture of potatoes and orange sweet potatoes.

I brought in more flavour, despite there being so much already in that stew, which contained red kidney beans and black beans as well as the powerhouse smoked paprika called pimentón.

This dish can be cooked in an air fryer oven or regular oven, and an earlier stage – the baking of the butternut and onion – is done in an air fryer.

Tony’s beef, butternut and potato bake with ginger, garlic and turmeric

Ingredients

(Serves 2-4)

300g to 600g leftover beef stew (or make savoury beef mince such as this recipe)

1 medium onion, peeled and sliced in half

3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

3cm fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped or grated

4cm fresh turmeric, peeled and finely chopped

1 medium to large butternut, sliced in half, seeds removed

Olive oil, as needed

Salt and black pepper

4 medium potatoes, peeled and halved

1 large orange sweet potato (or 2 medium), peeled and cubed

Cooking oil spray, to grease the oven dish

To garnish: 2 Tbsp finely chopped coriander leaves and 3 Tbsp olive oil

Method

Remove the leftover beef from the fridge.

Prepare the potatoes and the sweet potato, put them in a pot of lots of salted water, bring to a boil and cook until tender. Drain and leave to cool.

Peel the onion and cut it in half.

Cut the butternut in two lengthwise, and scoop out and discard the seeds.

Prepare the ginger, garlic and fresh turmeric.

Season the cut sides of the butternut halves with salt and black pepper.

Spoon half of each of the spices (ginger, turmeric and garlic) into the cavities of the two butternut halves.

Drizzle olive oil over the flat cut sides and a little into the cavities.

Cover with foil, making sure the foil tucks underneath.

Place them in an air fryer basket, or on an oven sheet on an air fryer oven shelf, and put the two onion halves alongside, also drizzled with a little olive oil.

Bake at 180°C until the butternut flesh is tender, about 45 minutes to an hour. Don’t worry about the timing, it’s ready when you put a knife or skewer in the thickest part and it’s soft enough.

Keep an eye on the onions – when they’re tender, and before they risk being overcooked, remove them to a side bowl to cool down. Remove the butternut from the air fryer and allow to cool to room temperature.

You now have: cooked leftover beef, which has come to room temperature; cooked potatoes of two kinds (you’ll probably find them somewhere on the sink), cooked butternut and onion, and the spices that have cooked in the butternut cavities.

Now: remember that you also have some leftover chopped turmeric, garlic and ginger on a working surface somewhere, right? (The leftovers after using the other half in the butternut cavities.) Pour a little olive oil into a large heavy pot and add those uncooked spices. Simmer for a minute or two on a low heat.

Scoop the flesh out of the butternut and into a bowl. Chop the onions, once they’ve cooled enough to be handled, and stir them into the butternut.

Now add the drained potatoes (regular and sweet orange) to this pot and stir for the oil and simmered garlic, ginger and turmeric to coat them. Now spoon in the contents of the two butternut cavities including any oil that has gathered there. Season with salt and black pepper and stir the mash.

Spray a deep oven dish with cooking oil spray and spoon in the beef.

Spoon in the butternut and spread it to every side and corner with the back of a spoon or fork.

Spoon the mash over and spread it in the same way, evenly.

Use the back of a fork to make old-fashioned fork patterns on top of the mash.

Bake in an air fryer oven for half an hour or a little longer.

Heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a small pot and stir in the chopped coriander leaves.

Spoon this over the top of the dish when you take it out of the oven. DM

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Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award.

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