Oh yeah. The fact that my fingers are going numb with cold right now tells me it’s comfort food season. And what’s more comforting than a nice beef stew?
The other day at Costco I went a bit nuts and purchased one of their large packages of excellent stewing beef. “I’ll make boeuf Bourgignon,” I said, forgetting two important things: 1) I am horribly allergic to red wine; and 2) I do not own a Dutch oven.
So scratch that. Let’s cook with beer instead. I took a bit of inspiration from the Guinness Storehouse website, and a little from Jamie Oliver, but other than that I just kind of winged it.
First I started off by roasting some of my vegetables. That’s 1 head garlic, with the top chopped off, 1 package white mushrooms chopped in half, and 1 package pearl onions, peeled.
Drizzle those with olive oil and roast at 400°F for about half an hour, and give the onions and mushrooms a good stir about halfway through.
Then I peeled and roughly chopped 3 parsnips and 4 carrots, and a small bunch of celery. And some potatoes, which aren’t in this shot. How many potatoes? I don’t remember. I didn’t take a picture of them.
That all goes straight into the pot.
You can tip in the roasted onions and mushrooms, too.
Save the garlic on a plate for a little bit.
Now you can work on your meat, and this is going to take a while. This is whatever size the package of stewing beef is that comes from Costco, which is extremely large, but the beef is truly excellent and I highly recommend it. I cut my chunks in half just to make them more manageable with a spoon. Then you pat them dry with a paper towel and put them on a plate. You could use a clean tea towel to dry your meat if you were feeling environmentally conscious, but let’s face it: ew.
In a bowl, mix together some flour (I used buckwheat just in case a gluten-free person came over for dinner sometime in the future – but then the Pie pointed out that Guinness has gluten in it so I’m an idiot), salt, pepper, and cayenne seasoning.
Spill some of that onto a plate and spread it out. Roll your meat chunks in the flour.
Brown the meat, working in small batches, in that skillet you already used on medium heat. Add some more olive oil if it starts to dry out and smoke. Chuck the browned beef into the pot with the vegetables. This is probably the most tedious step, and takes a while.
Once you have browned all the meat, pour about 3 1/2 cups beef broth into the vegetable/meat pot. I found this concentrated stuff at the grocery store. All you have to do is add boiling water. Sure takes up less space in my cupboard!
Tie a bundle of thyme and rosemary together and chuck that in as well. I find if you tie the bundle string to the handle of the pot it makes getting it out later a lot easier. Bring the contents to a simmer.
In the skillet that you have been using, plop a little butter and more olive oil and let that melt.
Add in the garlic you roasted earlier and mash it with a wooden spoon.
Then pour in 2 cans Guinness stout beer and bring that to a simmer.
Scrape the bottom lots with your wooden spoon.
Pour that whole lot into your bubbling stew and let that simmer with the lid off, stirring occasionally, to reduce for a while (at least an hour). You may find you have to add in a bit of corn starch after a while for thickening if you used a gluten-free flour.
We served ours with some beer bread made out of Mill Street’s Oktoberfest.
You can simplify all this by doing it all in a slow cooker, but I find I prefer the sharper flavours of the roasted vegetables and the constant stirring — you’d still have to brown the meat before slow-cooking it anyway. But boy it is time-consuming.
It’s been so busy here since Victoria Day that we haven’t had a chance to really do a lot of cooking for cooking’s sake. As a result, when I cleaned out our refrigerator this weekend in preparation for my parents’ arrival tomorrow (!), I found a sizable amount of very sad-looking produce. When I bought it, it looked sad, as most Newfoundland produce does, and two weeks in my crisper made it sadder still. Sad vegetables are just begging to be chucked in sauces, roasted, layered in a casserole, or made into soup. So I made soup.
I had red vegetables and green vegetables, and so I decided to make two different soups.
Each one started with onions and garlic, obviously.
The red soup was carrots, red peppers, mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes.
And I scooped out the seeds of the tomatoes. Well, some of them. I got bored quickly.
Chop that up, chuck it in a pot with some broth, some chipotle seasoning, and chinese five spice, then blend it up and you’ve got a savoury soup with a bit of kick.
The green soup had fennel, celery, cucumbers, broccoli, leeks, and cabbage.
To even out the flavours I added dill, mustard powder, salt, and a dash of cumin. Blended up, it’s cool as the cucumbers inside it.
Then I stored them all in plastic containers and froze them for future enjoyment!
This recipe comes from Potato Salad: 65 Recipes from Classic to Cool. At one point in this book the authors note that potato salad is as American as apple pie. Thankfully they leave it at that. Because I am a sports researcher, it drives me absolutely bonkers when I read somewhere that something is “as American as baseball and apple pie.” In case you didn’t know (and on the slight off-chance that you actually care), baseball actually originated in Canada. So while it may be the great American pastime (and gridiron football will start hemming and hawing to be noticed at this point), it ain’t American.
I don’t, on the other hand, know anything about the origins of potato salad. Sorry ’bout that. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that potato salad came from wherever it is that potatoes are indigenous.
Okay enough blather. You want a recipe. Of course I left the recipe book at home and I’m at school so I’m guessing on the measurements from my photographs. It’s not like potato salad is an exact science.
Start with 2 pounds new potatoes. Plop those babies in a pot, cover them with water, and boil them until they are nice and yielding when you stab them with a sharp knife. Not that most squishy things don’t yield when you stab them with a sharp knife. And I don’t really like the turn this post is taking … So on that note, drain the cooked potatoes and let them cool until you can handle them without burning yourself.
Chop the potatoes up into halves or quarters or thirds (whatever works for the size of your potato) and plop those in a bowl.
Take 1 stalk celery, with all the objectionable bits cut off, and chop that up for the bowl.
Then take a TINY onion. You can see the scale. I have tiny munchkin/carnie hands, so objects in photo are smaller than they appear.
Because the recipe calls for only 1/4 cup chopped onion and that’s a very small amount. Stick that in the bowl as well.
You’re going to need 1/2 cup green peas. I thawed these from the freezer. So much for market fresh!
You’re going to need 1 hardboiled egg, as well. I don’t care how you get it, but once you have it, peel it and chop it up and add the bits to the bowl.
Chop up some fresh herbs, about 1 tablespoon chives and 2 tablespoons parsley.
How I love chopping herbs! Well except thyme. That sucker’s a real pain.
So that’s all the bits, in the bowl. Except the herbs.
Now the dressing is something unnecessarily confabulated, like 1/2 cup sour cream, 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon greek yogurt, 2 teaspoons lemon juice, and 1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper. Or whatever the stuff in that wee bowl looks like to you.
Now, toss everything together and store in an airtight container in the fridge for a few hours (or overnight) to let the flavours blend. Then eat your face off!