Recipe and how to make Cypriot Beef Tava

 

Beef Tava is a traditional Cypriot dish of slowly cooked meat, lamb or beef with vegetables, herbs & spices, easy to make, feeds many inexpensively.

And I've watched lots of 'You Tube' videos produced by cooks from Cyprus. Slog, I have you. And can state that their nations cultural recipes call for a few spices and hours in the oven which produces lovely casseroles. You will taste all the ingredients in this Tava dish, and yes the spices are there, but not centre stage. That's where the meat is.

You and I may on first glance think this fare is a bit simple and it yes it is. 

But

Tava can be either beef or lamb so put this on a plate in front of anyone partial to a Lancashire hot pot, a Welsh cawl, a French navarin, or Italian cutturiedde and they will silently mange looking up at you with those doey eyes, that you love...

This though is a combine recipe, quartered washed pots, chunks of beef, quartered onions, quartered toms, water, seasoning, cumin seeds, cinnamon, lemon juice, oregano, and bay leaves, oh and a good glug of olive oil. Mix and wrap the top of a pyrex dish tightly with tin foil, then cover with its lid and bake for three hours at 160. It shouldn't be too dry so check occasionally. Brown it off at the end at 180.

I can almost hear Stavros lament, 'My parents, err, they only eat Cypriot food, nothing Greek, nothing Turkish, err just what they have always eaten',  

And there's nothing wrong with that Stavros. Because without the tradition recipes become forlorn or forgotten. 

Stin lya mas! (Cheers).

pic prior to going in the oven