Nutgraf

Seriously, good eatin'.

Trapped in the house – not even allowed to help shovel us out – I had to do something to earn my keep during Snowpocalypse 2010. While everyone else was out organizing massive snowball fights via Facebook, I went all clean-a-thon on my place – polishing the counters, vacuuming, reorganizing all of my clothes and sifting through the jewelry archives, squirreling away the good stuff into various hidey holes where I will never find it. And generally trying to keep moving constantly, to assuage my guilt over leaving poor, beleaguered spouse out there to fend for himself in the wilds of Bethesda with a shovel and a dream. So I decided to make stew while he liberated us from the Deathsnow.

Here are some Deathsnow pictures! I wasn’t able to stray far, and mostly trotted up and down our front walk, hitting azaleas with a broom to try to knock some of the heavy snow off of them.

But back to the stew: It’s a very good stew, and kind of the definition of comfort food. Takes a vigorous slathering with horseradish, and keeps well. And so I share it with you as a great thing to have in your arsenal.

It is an adapted version of the Beef Stew Gaston recipe from Joy of Cooking.

• Take about 2-3 pounds of stewing beef – however you define that.
• Whack it in a big pot with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and stir it around for a while as it browns.
• When it’s all browned up, scoop it out and discard the residual goo.
• Dust the beef chunks with flour, salt and pepper.
• Toss into your big pot and get to boiling: one cup broth (beef, veg… whatever you have around), one 15-oz can of tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes, one chopped onion, 3-ish cloves of garlic chopped, about 1/4 cup of chopped parsley, 12-15-ish peppercorns, one bay leaf, and one or two cloves. Cloves are a delicate calculation and it’s easy to use too much – do not overdo them.
• When that’s boiling, add your browned meat and simmer for about 3 hrs.
• After about 2.5 hours, add 2-3 peeled, chopped potatoes, 3 peeled, chopped carrots, 1-2 stalks chopped celery (all in big chunks), and a cup of red wine.

Enjoy with horseradish and more wine.

So what do you make/crave when it’s cold and shovely out?

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.