Sauté in a large frying pan:
500 g ground beef or thinly-sliced stew beef
1 large onion cut into wedges (or diced if you are hiding the onions from picky eaters)
5 cloves garlic, minced
When meat is browned, add:
15 fresh mushrooms (sliced)
While they are cooking, begin to season until it tastes very rich and salty with:
30 ml Worcestershire sauce (substitute soy sauce – with a little sugar)
Add:
15 ml red or white wine (pour yourself a glass too, you’ve earned it!)
5 ml pepper
When all is cooked and seasoned richly, add
390 g sour cream*
Heat on low and do not bring to high temperature – or cream will separate and curdle (like cheese.) The sour cream will reduce the intensity of the meat mixture, which is why you need it overly salty and rich before you put the cream in. Serve over flat egg noodles or rice.
*If you can’t obtain sour cream locally, you can try these ideas:
Sour cream cannot be made at home with pasteurized cream (large companies do pasteurization by heating the milk to kill bacteria and make the milk safer to ship. Unpasteurized milk would be if you have access to a neighbor’s cow and can get cream from them.) The lack of bacteria in the cream will cause the cream to spoil instead of sour. If you have access to unpasteurized heavy cream, you can add 15 ml of vinegar to 450 ml of cream and let the mixture stand out at room temperature for several hours until curdled.
If you can’t get unpasteurized cream, you can still make crème fraîche, which is also a soured cream. The taste is generally milder than that of sour cream, but it may be an acceptable substitute for you in recipes that call for sour cream. You can make crème fraîche by adding 225 ml of buttermilk to 450 ml of heavy cream and leaving it out in a warm place (26 to 32 is ideal) for as few as eight hours and as many as 24 hours.