Archive for the 'stews & braises' Category
I woke up this morning craving -nay, requiring- vegetables. Since the back yard is still half covered with thick, dingy ice floes I’m not quite in full-on salad mode. (At this point I’m not fully convinced spring is going to actually come – I’ll believe it when I see something green poking through.) My brain was trying to push me toward butter chicken, so I compromised with this veggie-based curry of sorts. I’ve seen a lot of curried sweet potato-legume (lentil, black & kidney bean) concoctions in the past month, so I may as well go ahead and make one and get it out of my system. This one came from the New York Times, by way of SmittenKitchen.
I meant to make naan, but my timing was way off. (Timing is not my forte. It’s particularly apparent at Thanksgiving and other multi-course meal events where there are a lot of witnesses.) I’m kind of glad I didn’t – had I made it I would have eaten three easily, and then sat around all night digesting dough. When I abandoned the naan idea, I put on a pot of basmati rice instead. (Perhaps naan tomorrow – something will need to go with the surplus of lentils.)
Really, there’s a serious lot of leftovers. 1 1/2 cups of dry lentils plus 2 pounds of sweet potato made a massive pot. Lunch is taken care of for a week, anyway. To go with I roasted some cauliflower – tossed around in a bit of oil and roasted at 400F for about 15 minutes. I have fulfilled my vegetable quota (for once). And I feel good for having eaten it all. (If I’d only stop eating these mini eggs.)
Curried Lentils With Sweet Potatoes and Swiss Chard
adapted from the New York Times, by way of SmittenKitchen. Bump up the curry powder if you like things spicier.
1-2 Tbsp. canola oil
1 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp. grated ginger
1 1/2 tsp. garam masala
1 1/2 tsp. curry powder
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
4 to 5 cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 lbs. sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 4 cups)
1 1/2 cups dried lentils
1 bay leaf
1 bunch Swiss chard, center ribs removed, leaves thinly sliced
1 tsp. salt, or to taste
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/4 cup chopped almonds (tamari almonds, if you can find them), for garnish (optional)
In large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and saute until translucent, 5 to 7 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, garam masala, curry powder and jalapeno. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
Stir in 4 cups broth, sweet potatoes, lentils and bay leaf. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 25 minutes. (If the mixture seems dry, add more stock as needed.) Stir in the chard and salt and pepper, and continue cooking until the chard is cooked, another 10 minutes.
Stir in cilantro and lime juice and serve immediately, plain or over rice, garnished with almonds.
Serves 6 (or so).
One Year Ago: Thai Coconut Soup with Lemongrass and Chicken/Shrimp, Pork Potstickers, Curried Peanut Orange Shrimp and Green Tea Crème Brulée
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April 08 2009 | beans and stews & braises and vegetarian | 14 Comments »
As promised, I hauled out my Crock-pot today. (Partly to celebrate the shiny new ones that are en route to Maureen and Theresa! I am heeding the request to post winners’ names. Sorry I’m so late.) And last night I pulled out a boneless leg of lamb that had been taking up altogether too much space in the freezer.
When outside it’s the same shade of grey all day long, so that you can’t tell what time it is until it begins to get dark at 4 o’clock, and the gritty snow and slush require you to halt the dog upon entering the house and wipe down his muddy paws every single time he has to go pee or sniff something, it puts me in the mood for a dark, sticky, robust, slow-cooked stew, preferably served over a mound of warm carbohydrates.
I’ve been thinking about braised lamb shanks, but this caught my eye as I flipped through magazines in the car on our drive home. The original is done in a Dutch oven and calls for raisins and figs, but I opted to stick with just figs, which aren’t as sweet as raisins; I imagine dried apricots would work well too. The lamb roast was cut into chunks, half of which are back in the freezer for a future experiment.
I browned and threw the meat/onion/stock component in at noon, and added the beans, carrots and figs at around 4. At 6ish I put a kettle on to boil and made couscous. (1 cup couscous to 1 1/4 cups boiling water; pour over the couscous in a bowl and top with a plate; leave for 10 minutes then fluff with a fork. I don’t even understand why they make instant couscous. Could it really be faster and easier?)
Mike loved this. I liked it more the deeper into the bowl I got; the combination of cinnamon and lamb has always been a little too Medieval for me. I can’t seem to shake the thought that it was once used to mask meat that had gone a little off. It makes lamb taste gamier to me. It was quite tasty though, and I imagine it will be more so tomorrow, and Thursday when I’ll be in Red Deer at dinnertime. This is another Great Thing about slow cookers in the winter: you can just lid the leftovers and set the whole thing outside, or in your garage, and plug it back in to rewarm the next night. (If you suspect any critters in your yard are cunning enough to access your slow cooker, hide it in the barbecue.)
Provided it’s cold enough, of course. Don’t try this in July. Or in Texas.
Middle Eastern Slow-Cooked Stew with Lamb, Chickpeas and Figs
adapted from Cooking Light Magazine
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1 1/2 pounds boneless leg of lamb, trimmed and cubed
3 large onions, halved and thinly sliced
4-6 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cinnamon stick
1 can less-sodium beef broth
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can chick peas, drained
1-2 cups baby carrots
1 cup dried figs, halved
salt and pepper
fresh mint, if you like
Slow-cooker version: heat a drizzle of oil in a skillet and brown the lamb in batches, without crowding the pan, transferring to the slow cooker as you go. (No need to cook them through, just brown them to add flavour.) Add a little more oil and then brown the onions and garlic; add to the slow cooker. Pour about 1/2 cup of water into the skillet and scrape up any browned bits; add to the slow cooker along with the ginger, spices and stock. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. At around the 4 hour mark, add the chick peas, carrots and figs. When you’re ready to eat, season with salt and pepper and if you like, stir in some fresh mint (or scatter it on top).
Stovetop version: Heat a drizzle of oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat; sauté the lamb in batches until browned. Remove from pan and set aside; brown the onions. Add the garlic and 1/2 cup water; cook for a few more minutes, scraping up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan.
Return the meat to the pan along with the ginger and spices. Add the stock, cover, reduce heat and simmer for an hour. Stir in the chick peas, carrots, and figs; cover and simmer 20-30 minutes or until carrots are tender. Season with salt and stir in chopped fresh mint just before serving, or sprinkle it on top of each bowl.
Serves 8.
Calories:310 (18% from fat)
Fat:6.2g (sat 1.8g,mono 2.5g,poly 0.6g)
Protein:21.4g
Carbohydrate:44.5g
Fiber:6.6g
Cholesterol:49mg
Sodium:542mg
Calcium:90mg
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November 18 2008 | freezable and lamb and slow cooker and stews & braises | 12 Comments »
When new babies arrive I get the urge to bring over food. (And when it’s #3, there really is no better thing to bring.) The occasion of a brand new person and no sleep calls for casseroles and pots of soup and stew and quick breads; things that are easily reheatable and edible with one hand.
So beef stew, done in the slow cooker with some beef I had in the freezer and the last of a bottle of leftover wine. With it, garlicky cheese biscuits. Remember those cinnamon sticky biscuits I made about 250 days ago? Leave out the cinnamon and sugar, and instead brush the dough with melted butter and garlic, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Roll, cut and bake. You could turn any cinnamon bun recipe into cheesy, garlicky buns instead.
Beef Stu
1 lb. beef stew meat, flank steak or chuck, trimmed of fat and cut into cubes
olive or canola oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
a few glugs of red wine (optional)
1 can beef, vegetable or chicken broth
1 can diced or stewed tomatoes, undrained (any size – optional)
1 tsp. thyme
1 bay leaf
2 potatoes, cubed (unpeeled)
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup frozen peas
1-2 cups mushrooms, quartered
In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, heat about a drizzle of oil over medium-high heat and brown the beef in batches. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside.
Add a bit more oil and cook the onions for a few minutes, until soft. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the wine, broth and tomatoes with their juice, scraping the bottom of the pot to loosen any flavorful browned bits that have stuck to the bottom. At this point you could transfer the lot to a slow cooker, or return the beef to the pot. Add the thyme and bay leaves and bring to a simmer; turn the heat down to low, cover the pot, and let it simmer for about an hour. (Or turn the slow cooker down to low and set it for 4-6 hours.) Add the potatoes and carrots after an hour and cook the stew uncovered for another hour (or add the carrots and potatoes after a couple hours in the slow cooker). Add the peas for the last 10 minutes, and quickly saute the mushrooms in a skillet until browned and stir into the stew at the very end, so they don’t get too mushy. Fish out the bay leaves, season with salt and pepper, and serve it hot.
Blood & Gutscakes
a batch of vanilla (or any flavour) cupcakes
a batch of lemon pie filling, tinted green
raspberry or cherry jam or pie filling
frosting and sprinkles
Bake cupcakes as you normally would, cool and then cut a chunk out of the top like an inverted cone. Remove the excess cake from the cone, leaving a flat lid (kind of like a pumpkin) and hollow out a bit of the cake inside. Put a small spoonful of jam and a spoonful of lemon filling inside, swirling them a bit as you do. Top with the lid and frost with whatever frosting you like.
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October 29 2008 | beef and cake and one dish and slow cooker and stews & braises | 10 Comments »
Tonight, after 4pm, after an already jammed day, I made two batches of pulled pork, stuffed turkey cutlets, Southwestern soup, cranberry poached pears, granola bars, cookies, upside-down pear gingerbread, butternut squash soup with apples, and roasted pepper and goat cheese gratin.
None of this, mind you, was for dinner. It was all destined for CBC, foodstyling gigs and a cooking class, all of which happens tomorrow. If I may be allowed to complain for just a minute, I’m totally exhausted and my back hurts. And I have to be up again in 5 hours.
If I hadn’t made a batch of this Tuscan soup yesterday, it would have been toast and peanut butter all around. Fortunately, I hacked all the requisite vegetables into the pot as I unpacked produce from the market, with the directive of leaving it overnight to bake again today. That’s right, baked soup. And it really wasn’t so much a soup as a stew. It could, in fact, be more accurately labelled bean & vegetable stew – the chunk of bread, although interesting, does not define it, and in fact makes it sound far less healthy than it actually is. It has beans, and cabbage, and greens, and carrots, celery and potatoes, besides the bread. I added twice as many tomatoes as the original recipe called for (a cup just wasn’t enough to get it going, so I added a large can of plum tomatoes with their juice, and chopped them up with my stirring spoon) and poured in about half a tetra pack of chicken stock. And because I only had a cup of dried white beans left, and no canned, I soaked and added the cup and didn’t puree any at all. It was perfect, actually. Definitely a stew, and a not very soupy one at that.
I came across it while perusing Saveur’s French onion soup, and was intrigued not only by the photo but by the double-cookedness of it. Yesterday I had very low hopes for it (Mike ate some while I was at my sister’s house and was far from impressed), but tonight I decided it has potential. It needs garlic. And herbs. Definitely garlic. Maybe some chiles. Or sausage. But tonight after it was baked it was just fine sprinkled with freshly grated Parmesan – I scooped mine over the last of W’s rice he couldn’t get up with his fork.
Tuscan Twice-Cooked Bread Soup
adapted from Saveur, Issue #46
1 cup dried little white beans
canola or olive oil
2 onions, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and thickly sliced
2 celery ribs, thickly sliced
2 potatoes, peeled (or not) and thickly sliced
1 large bunch swiss chard or kale, ribs removed and leaves torn or coarsely chopped
1?2 small savoy cabbage, cored and coarsely chopped
1 796 mL can plum or diced tomatoes, undrained
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
3 thick slices day-old country-style white bread
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Cover the beans with twice as much water in a pot; soak overnight or bring to a simmer, then turn off the heat and let them soak for about 2 hours. Bring to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes, or until al dente.
In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat a good drizzle of oil over medium heat and saute the onions for about 10 minutes, until soft. Add carrots, celery, potatoes, chard and cabbage. Add tomatoes and stock, cover, and cook for about an hour, until everything is soft.
Tear the bread into chunks and add it to the pot; stir and return to a simmer. Cook for about 10 minutes, then season with salt and pepper. You can serve some of it at this point if you like, otherwise let it cool completely and refrigerate.
The next day, preheat oven to 375º. Heat the leftover soup in the casserole (I did it in my Le Cruset-style pot) in the oven, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until heated through, about 1 hour. For the last 30 minutes, do not stir; let soup brown lightly. Drizzle with olive oil and serve.
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October 06 2008 | beans and one dish and soup and stews & braises | 10 Comments »
Except that I can’t eat any. I’m having a minor test done tomorrow, which means I can only ingest clear fluids for 24 hours. Me! Going without food for 24 hours! Plus however much time I spend at the hospital tomorrow afternoon, which I’m sure will seem far longer on an empty stomach.
So, planning to spend a full Sunday out of the kitchen (very unusual for me), I made a batch of chicken stew with pesto yesterday for Mike and W. If I didn’t work in the food world, and had just a few go-to dinner recipes in my repertoire, this would be one of them. If I was one of those Moms who made meals on rotation – meatloaf Mondays, spaghetti Tuesdays, pork chop Wednesdays, and so on, this would definitely make the cut. Willem loves it (possibly on account of the pesto, which he seems to be in love with), and so do Mike and I. For some reason it turns out creamier tasting than it should, and is far more interesting than the sum of its (veg, legumes and skinless chicken or turkey) parts. Plus, it’s another one of those meals that’s freezable or keeps well in the fridge; ideal for dipping in to all week long. And because it’s all in one pot yet isn’t runny like soup, it makes a perfect portable lunch. If when it cools down you divide it into individual freezable containers, you can pull one out in the morning and by lunch it will be partially thawed – still cold enough to be safe, but with a head start on the reheating process.
I have to stop talking about food and go read a book or something to distract myself. Maybe I’ll open up A Stew or a Story, an assortment of short works by M.F.K. Fisher. If I can’t eat food, I can at least read about it…
Chicken & White Bean Stew with Pesto
Canola or olive oil, for cooking with
1 large onion, chopped
1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken thighs or turkey breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
3 big cloves of garlic, crushed
½ tsp. ground cumin
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can white kidney or navy beans, drained
1 can chicken broth
a few drops of Tabasco or a pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
Salt & pepper to taste
1/4 cup (or a couple of big spoonfuls) basil or sun-dried tomato pesto
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for serving (optional)
Heat a drizzle of oil in a large pot set over medium heat. Cook the onion and chicken pieces for about 5 minutes, until the onions are starting to brown and the chicken is opaque. Add the celery, carrots, and red pepper and cook for a few more minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften. Add the garlic and cumin and cook for another minute.
Add the beans, chicken broth, Tabasco and some salt and pepper and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat down to low, cover and let cook for about 45 minutes.
Stir in the pesto and serve topped with Parmesan cheese. Serves 4-6, or 2-3 with leftovers. It doubles easily if you want to make a bigger batch.
January 27 2008 | beans and chicken & turkey and freezable and one dish and slow cooker and stews & braises | 6 Comments »
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