Slow Cooked Beef Stew (with Mushrooms & Vegetables)

Ingredients:
group #1
2 lb beef top round or sirloin, cubed
1 large onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
3 carrots cut into coins
2 russet potatoes, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 portobello mushroom caps, cubed

group #2
1 cup red wine
14 oz canned diced tomatoes
1/2-1 teaspoon marjoram
1/2-1 teaspoon crushed rosemary
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

group #3
1 cup frozen or fresh green beans
1/3 cup frozen or fresh corn kernals

Directions:
Saute the ingredients from group #1 in a bit of canola oil until the vegetables are softened and the meat is lightly browned. Add to a 4 quart slow cooker. If the meat and vegetables gave off a lot of liquid and it isn't too oily, I add a little less than 1/4 cup of it into the slow cooker. Add the ingredients from group #2. Stir. Cover and cook for 7-8 hours. Stir in the ingredients from group #3. Cover and cook for an additional 1/2 hr. Stir and serve.

My thoughts:

This recipe is inspired by a stew my grandpop made when I was growing up. I don't think he ever even heard of a portobello mushroom but his stews always had a lot of vegetables. He would make them and use up whatever vegetables he had on hand and no two stews were the same. Some times they'd have tomatoes, some times green beans, some times corn. My favorites had green beans for some reason. He would cook it for hours on the stove top but when I was working on my cookbook last summer I realized how easy it was to make stew in the slow cooker. I don't have to keep an eye on it like Grandpop did and the results are just as good. I know browning meat in the morning is the last thing I feel like doing but it does make for a richer final product. What I do is cut up all the vegetables the night before and put them in a ziplock or Tupperware. I try to buy pre-cubed meat if it looks good but if I don't, I cube it and pack it in a separate container. That way in the morning all I have to do is shake the ingredients into the pan, brown them for a few minutes and then pop everything in the slow cooker.

Oyster Stew

Ingredients:
1 lb oysters with liqour
1 large onion, chopped
1 large russet potato, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 habanero pepper, chopped
1 cup diced smoked ham
24 oz evaporated milk
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
salt
pepper

Directions:
Heat the butter or oil in a dutch oven or large pot. Saute the onion, pepper, potato, celery and ham until the vegetables are softened. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer until the oysters are cooked through.

My thoughts:

This past weekend we went to the oyster festival in St. Michaels. One of the events was a oyster stew competition. For $5 you got a mug and could try 8 different stews then cast your vote. I honestly had never had oyster stew before but I liked it a lot. There was one that I loved but all of them were pretty similar. They were also pretty rich; lots of cream and butter. Which, to me, overpowered some of the oyster flavor. After the 6th or 7th sample, I even started to feel a little queasy. When I noticed that local oysters were under $7 a pound at our local Safeway, I figured I'd try to make an oyster stew that was both flavorful and not so heavy. To help accomplish that goal, I turned to one of my favorite ingredients: evaporated milk. I love it because, undiluted, it is super creamy and rich tasting but not heavy at all. In this case, I thinned it out with a bit of 2% milk and really liked the result. It didn't taste "canned" (the biggest fear I find people have about using evaporated milk) and it really let the oyster's flavor shine through. Some of the stews we tasted had bacon but I didn't really like the texture it had in the stew and it seemed to make the stew kind of oily. I liked the idea of a smoky flavor so I added some lean ham from one of those spiral sliced hams that are so readily available right now. It did exactly what I wanted: smoky flavor with no extra fat.

Pork and Fennel Stew

Ingredients:
2 lbs of boneless pork rib, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 cup red wine
1/4 cup flour
3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 cups broth, chicken or vegetable
2 leeks, halved and sliced
2 fennel bulbs, cut into thin 1 inch strips
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 tablespoons olive iil
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1 sprig fresh thyme
salt and pepper and paprika to taste

Directions:
Season pork cubes with salt, pepper, and paprika. Put the flour in a bowl (a paper bag would work well also), add a bit of salt and pepper, and then toss the pork in the flour until it is coated. Heat the oil in a large flat-bottomed pot, add the pork, the garlic, and the fennel seeds. Brown the meat on all sides. Add the fennel and leeks. Cook, stirring, for about 10 minutes until the vegetables have started to soften. Add the wine to the pot and stir until the wine has thickened and the flour stuck to the pan has loosened, about 2 minutes. Add the broth and the thyme and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down low and cover the pan, simmering for 45 minutes. Skim the scum off the top periodically during this time. Then add the potatoes and carrots, and cook (stirring frequently) at a medium-low heat for 1 hour or until the carrots and potatoes are tender. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.

My thoughts:

This stew might not win any beauty contests but it doesn't have to-the taste is enough. Fennel and pork are natural companions and this stew highlights them both. My husband (who also was kind enough to both create and type up this recipe for me) made this for dinner earlier this week. The leftovers were just as good the next day.

Posole (Pork and Hominy Stew)

Ingredients:
2 1/2 lb boneless pork loin, cubed
40 oz canned hominy
1/2 gallon chicken stock
1/4 flour
8 large, dried New Mexican red chiles
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, sliced
2 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon oregano
juice of 1/2 lime

Directions:
Seed chiles, reserving seeds. In a dry, hot frying pan heat the chiles until warmed through and fragrant. Do not burn or brown them. Place chiles and seeds in a medium pot with 1 quart broth, garlic, lime juice, cumin and oregano. Bring to a boil and continue to boil 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in a plastic bag, toss the cubed pork with the flour to coat. In a pot large enough to hold all of the stew, brown the meat on all sides. Add onions and cook about 5 minutes or until soft. Pour in the remaining broth and add the hominy. Strain the chile broth mixture into the soup pot, mashing down with a wooden spoon to press the pulp and juice out. Discard the seeds and solids remaining. Cook 1 1/2- 2 hours or until the pork is tender. Salt to taste.


My thoughts:
The whole house smells like spicy stew when you make this dish. It takes a while, but it is actually very easy to make. It keeps well in the fridge and I think it even tastes better the second day. We garnished it with a bit of shredded red cabbage for crunch.