Friday, January 15, 2010

Beef Stew

I wrote this entire post yesterday and lost it, so you will have to imagine how clever and witty it was because I don't think I can repeat the magic. I have made this Beef Stew recipe twice since New Years. It is quite delicious and satisfying as a winter meal. The first time I just served it with a salad of mixed baby greens from my garden, avocado, pomegranate seeds and red onion. The second time I served it over Leek and Potato puree. (This was actually DR's brilliant idea. I made the puree and then had no idea what to do with it.) It was perfect! The puree gave the soup some extra body and made it more filling, and the soup gave a savoury-ness to the puree that was much needed... a puree like that is too rich and bland to eat too much on it's own.

I got this recipe from the book Cleaving the second book by Julie Powell of Julie & Julia fame.  By virtue of it being her lesser known work the wait for it at the library was shorter than for Julie & Julia, so I read it first. For Ms. Powell's sake I would suggest not doing this. Cleaving is the story of her 6-month apprenticeship at a butcher shop in upstate New York. This part is fairly interesting as she learns how to debone a pig, make sausage, and hack through all manner of meat products. (Reading it did make for some unpleasantly meaty dreams when I was suffering from a brief stint with the flu over Christmas) But by far the more unsavory and nauseous element of this book is her overly detailed descriptions of her extended extra-marital affair, which she blames on the excess of free time and the email and text messaging mobile phone she acquired after the success of her first book and movie. First of all, it's annoying to listen to someone complain about how success has corrupted them, but now that I am reading the first book with the knowledge of the second book, it is pretty clear that the only thing keeping this histrionic narcissist from having an affair sooner was free time and an interested partner. She seems surprised by her behavior in the second book, but the first book is full of complaints about her husband, and jealousy over her single friends romantic conquests. For a book about food, it's an awful lot about sex. So she may be right in that her success gave her the opportunity to engage in behavior that a 40 hour a week job and a time-consuming cooking project didn't. Anyway, despite this being kind of a skeevy and not terribly well-written memoir, it did have some good recipes in it, and I'm not going to let the source taint the food.

I have made some adaptations to this recipe. For instance I am using more vegetables, because I found it to be too meaty the first time (which is really saying something). And I make it in the slow cooker, rather than in the oven. I think it's safer for this kind of thing because when things cook for hours it's easy to forget about them. So here is my version.

3 lbs stew meat cut in chunks (The chunks in the meat from Trader Joes that I get are usually too big, so I cut them in half)
1/2 cup flour in a shallow bowl
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus some more (or however much you think you need)
1 large onion sliced into thin half moons
1 head of garlic, minced
6 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch rounds
6 stalks of celery, finely sliced
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh thyme
2 cups red wine
1 1/4 cups beef stock (Ingredients: Organic Beef Stock (Water, Organic Beef) Organic Beed Flavor Base (Organic Roasted Beef Including Beef Juices, Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Beef Flavor, Organic Onion Powder, Sea Salt, Organic Canola Oil, Organic Caramel Color, Organic Garlic Powder, Organic Black Pepper, Organic Paprika, Natural Flavor), Sea Salt, Organic Garlic Powder) I 've had this beef broth in my cabinet since before the project began. It's amazing that I've still got stuff like this, but it came in handy since Beef Stock is something I am very intimidated about making. There is enough left for one more stew I think...yikes.
1 Tablespoon tomato paste
Salt and pepper to taste

Dry the stew meat with paper towels and toss them lightly with the flour until evenly dusted. On the stovetop, brown the meat in batches in the olive oil over high heat.
Once all the meat has been browned remove it to the slow cooker, add the beef broth, wine and tomato paste, cover and turn the cooker to the low setting.
On the stovetop, turn the heat down to medium, add some more oil to the same pan, and throw in the vegetables and thyme. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring often, until vegetables are softened.
Then add the vegetables to the slow cooker and add salt and freshly ground pepper generously. Cover and walk away for as many hours as you can. If you need to eat the stew in the next two hours, I suggest turning the heat up to high, but if you can avoid it, leave it on low. Around here people are used to eating meals very late, and often much later than they were originally told, but your house might run more like a train, I don't know.

1 comment:

  1. This beef stew recipe sounds great! I think it would be even better if it included grass fed beef. It adds wonderful flavor and it actually more healthy than grain fed beef. I work with La Cense Beef which sells 100% Grass Fed Beef directly to consumers. Grass fed beef is not only lower in fat and calories but high in heart healthy omega 3 acids.

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