it's that time of week again, and if your affairs have been as busy as mine, not a moment too soon. What an exhausting week! I wrapped up my first month of a post grad degree, worked thirty hours at the cafe, and even managed to take some formal physical exercise. That's why by the time the weekend rolled around I was starting to doubt my ability to do anything special tonight - thus I have made that most humble of British dishes, the meat and vegetable stew.
To tell you the truth, I didn't know much about stew prior to tonight, and I still don't - I think it is, like baked fish, just one of those things that people have done everywhere, since the dawn of time. A cursory glance at Wikipedia, however, tells us that the British Isles were the first to formally develop stewing technique. This might make you think 'hooray, we won' right now, but don't worry, later on you'll realize you've been had.
A red meat stew - again I'm using Kangaroo for it's sustainable nature - is almost a kitchen cheat sheet, characterized as it is by it's almost total lack of recipe. To give you an idea of how simple it is, I'll list my own method below.
- Dust 1 kg of meat with flour and brown it in a deep pan before transferring to a bowl
- Heat some more oil and throw in a handful of pickling onions - chopped in half - for a few minutes
- Throw your meat back in, along with a tin of chopped tomatoes, half a cup of wine, and 3 cups of beef stock
- Bring to the boil and simmer for just over an hour and a half
- Throw in some chopped carrots and mushrooms, simmer, uncovered, for another half an hour or so
Sensing a chance to look really impressive, I knocked up some rosemary dumplings - some flour and butter mixed together along with half a cup of buttermilk and some chopped rosemary, then spooned in globs into the stew for the final 15 minutes of cooking. Seriously you guys, you should see these magnificent bastards - they're like the cute younger sister to the Yorkshire pudding, all doughy batter with soaked in gravy.
These dumplings actually involved going out to nick some rosemary - a rosemary heist, if you will - from a sweet old crone who always waves at me from her front yard. She can't speak a lick of English but if you're out there, crone, please forgive me for hacking at your rosemary bush with a pair of scissors.
The thing I love about stew, and what I think gives it its British character - aside from those exquisite dumplings, of course - is its complete lack of pretension. The name beef bourguignon might make people go weak at the knees, but it really is the same thing - beef stewed in wine and onions. Part of me thinks that the reason British food is looked down upon with disdain these days is simply because it's impervious to the Masterchef era of cooking, with it's decidedly form-over-function approach.
I possess one of said shows cook books, and while it does have a couple of neat recipes, it also contains such pearls as even if it's just making some toast to eat in front of the TV, presentation is vital.
Toast. TV. Presentation. WHAT?!? British food rejects this ideology - it's too rugged, too grounded in salt and earth and toil to act as though beef stew will ever look like anything other than vomit.
I'd like to take this moment to point out that I've had 4 glasses of wine by this point. So with that perhaps I'll leave you all to whatever it is your eating for your Sunday dinner. It could be anything - coq au vin, spaghetti bolognese, or even beans on toast - as long as the joy of eating it far outweighs the effort of making it, there's a little British cuisine in all of it.
Peace,
-Jon
P.S The last time I made this it was rich beyond belief - I was glad to see the last of it. This time the Kangaroo made a big difference, I surmise because of it's lack of fat. Are you fascinated by that? I thought so
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