Today was the final day of preparation of the beef stew we ate tonight. Martin was here for dinner. Yesterday, I made sure that I didn’t cook the beef so much that it was falling apart. Today I removed as much fat from the top of the cooled stew as I could. I then performed the most tedious task during this process – I picked out all of the chunks of meat and set it aside in a separate bowl.
This is where I begin to deviate from the Julia Child article. I continued cooking down the liquid and vegetables on the top of the stove, to further break down the vegetables and to concentrate the flavors.
I strained the liquid into a gravy separator to further defat the sauce, then I put the solids through a food mill. Pushing them through a strainer would probably yeild about the same results. The goal is just to get as much of the liquid out of the vegetables as possible. I added some of the defatted liquid to some flour and heated the liquid back up. I then began to add the slurry to the liquid to thicken it – I just keep adding it until it’s a nice gravy consistency. I added the beef back to the liquid and put it back in the oven at a low temperature. The goal now is just to get the meat to be super-tender and falling apart.
I added sliced portabella mushrooms and peeled pearl onions close to when the stew was done, and continued cooking it until it was all done. I also added more beef stock as needed (two cups total) to keep the amount of liquid consistent. Somehow, Liberty Cafe’s mushrooms are really tender – I can never get mine to be like theirs.
- My Best Beef Stew (Food & Wine, January 1996, p.34)
- Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes
- Glazed Carrots (Fine Cooking #42, January 2001 p.24)
- Baby Spinach Salad with cherry tomatoes, olive oil and balsamic vinegar
Wine: Pezzi King 2001 Carreras Vineyard Zinfandel (Dry Creek Valley, California). Decent, not great. We bought this as a future, and it was fantastic in the bottle. We have several more bottles, so time will tell.