What's a Girl to Stew??

One evening last week about 9ish we heard a rumble of thunder (which would be weird enough in summer here, but in winter? Two words - biz-arre!) and then the skies opened up. It was a half degree above freezing, so our rain arrived as thundergraupel:

In our house, we don't call these little Dippin' Dots(TM) of hail "thundergraupel" - we coined the term skystreusel. They put a nice crunchy crust on everything and mooshed down to a slippery glaze on our street. The poor FedEx guy the next morning...

So here we are six days later and thanks to a steady flow of cold air from Canada ("ALL of it?" shouts Vlad behind me), we still have a pretty streusel crust on our lawn and shady sidewalks. What a great reason to stay the heck in and eat. You'd think the holidays would have us up to here with food, but Vlad in particular is always game for a rematch. No more crown roasts or turkeys, though. It's time to get back to stayin' in & hangin' out food: stew.

Now I'm sure you don't need a recipe for stew, but here's my template:

1. Cut up lotsa stuff. Here the star of the show is a chuck roast cut into bite-sized pieces (which really can be bite-sized if you do your own cutting; the huge supermarket stewing beef chunks would choke a cheetah). I also chopped up a couple of celery stalks, a couple of medium tomatoes, a couple of sweet onions, three cloves of garlic, some rosemary and thyme from my summer garden stash, three medium carrots and six large russet potatoes.

2. In a large stew pot, I warmed some olive oil and sweated the onions, garlic and celery over low heat until they were soft and translucent.

3. I tossed in the herbs and the meat. I let the meat cubes brown without my help - poke at them too much and they get all grey and grumpy (hey, just like me!).

4. I added the tomatoes and a couple of cups of thawed stock (beef or chicken - doesn't matter. Add a splash of red wine if your chicken stock is too mild. Don't add too much stock - the veg will give off their own water).

5. I brought the lot just to the boil and then reduced the heat to low so that the dish simmered slowly.

6. For a "serves 6" portion like you see here, I always check after 30 minutes. If the veg are softening nicely (and they were), I add the carrots and potatoes and simmer 20 -30 minutes more.

7. Then the fun part: checking for doneness - tender veg? Check. Savory rich stock? Yup. Meat that melts like butter on your tongue? That's the fun one - filch a meat chunk from the pot and blow on it a bit - protect your precious tastebuds! Tender and awesome? I bet it is.  

Now sane people like you would just sit down with a loaf of bread, a bowl of stew and some football on the telly, right? Well people like me go instead into squirrel mode.

I always knew I'd find a use for the 4-foot tall sleeve of takeout boxes I bought for $5 at my local restaurant supply. Yup - freezer stew bricks!

Apologies - again my "food = barf" proclivities appear above. Believe me - this stew was far tastier than it looks. It was rich and homey and comforting and had no cranberry sauce, stuffing or gravy anywhere near it - thank heavens! It was a nice plain January dish, and will suit February well too, when the bricks emerge from the freezer. Now we only have to hope that Seattle emerges from its freezer, and pronto!