A Little Something In Advance

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Truthfully, I am not a very good meal-planner.  The moment I realize that I want chicken for dinner, I remember it’s still in the freezer.  Or, when I decide I want bolognese, it is going to be a couple of hours before dinner.  If these decisions occur on a weekend afternoon, so be it, but when they come at the end of a workday, it’s not nearly so leisurely and pleasant. 

As a solution, I am slowly training myself to some advance preparation.  I am always wondering what professional cooks (like my hero, Marc Vetri) do in a restaurant kitchen to prepare excellent dishes so quickly and consistently.  After reading Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halle Cookbook, I started to understand how much professionals do in advance.  While I am obviously not a professional, some of those concepts can still apply to an amateur’s home kitchen.  In this case, it’s caramelized onions. 

It started one night when I was making Nigella Lawson’s Lamb Ragu with buttermilk mashed potatoes (or mash, as she might say).  The recipe calls for store-bought onion confit (it is from her Nigella Express Cookbook, after all), but that’s not something we would ever buy.  Thus, before I do anything else, I have to make caramelized onions.  Instead of taking thirty minutes, it takes nearly an hour.  One of these days, it occurred to me that I could make the caramelized onions days in advance, store them in the fridge, and then just pull a few out when I need them.

So, what follows is my version of the Metropolitan Bakery’s caramelized onions.  They would use balsamic vinegar where I use wine, but the concept is still the same.  The key, I think, to caramelized onions is patience. It takes time to soften and sweeten, but it’s worth the wait.  The onions can compliment pasta sauces (particularly sauces with few ingredients and are not tomato-based), fill an omelette, or top off a thin-crust pizza.

Caramelized Onions

2 large yellow onions, sliced into quarter-inch think half-rounds
1/4 cup red wine
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of salt
Pinch of sugar
(Note:  The measurements of the fat are my approximations, so use your judgment.  Also, you could use any combination of butter and olive oil you want - from all butter to no butter.)

1.  Bring a saute pan to medium heat and add the butter.  When it’s melted, add the olive oil and swirl together.
2.  Add the onions and stir to coat.  Allow them to soften at this heat (five to eight minutes), stirring occasionally.
3.  Add salt and sugar, stir, cover, and turn the heat to low.  Cook until complete soft and browned (twenty to twenty-five minutes).
4.  Uncover (typically there will so moisture in the pan at this point, which is fine - it’ll cook off).  Turn the heat to medium-high, add the wine, and stir.  Stir frequently as the moisture and the red wine cook off.  Once most of it is evaporated (the onions should be wet, but you should not see any liquid at the bottom of the pan), take off the heat.  Store in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Spring supper

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

A lovely spring supper with new potatoes, salmon on a bed of local spinach, and New Jersey asparagus.  M and I have been sick, and sad that we haven’t cooked as much local stuff lately, so this asparagus was a treat.  (I’ll be posting soon about what’s left in our freezer, Emily!)

We got our first CSA box on Monday, which was a joyful occasion.  We’ve eaten some of the mushrooms, Asian greens, scallions, lettuce, and spinach.  Left is a bag of baby spring greens and a couple of things I’m forgetting.  I ate all the radishes standing over the sink as I washed them (M’s not a big fan), which was a zingy, wet, crisp delight!

Spring Salad

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

This beauty has got to be one of my favorite spring meals which, like a tomato salad with basil in August, is a natural fit to spring produce in the Delaware Valley. It has become something of a weekly ritual for Lindsey and I to pick up produce at the Saturday Clark Park Market, followed by a lunch salad paying homage to whatever season we’re in. This one, while firmly rooted in the optimistic green of Spring, keeps the not-so-distant winter in sight with the rich underpinnings of smoky bacon and tangy shallot.

Spring Salad with Asparagus, Bacon and Hard-Cooked Egg
-serves two as a meal, four as an accompaniment

two good handfuls of lettuce mix, mesclun, or young spinach
one shallot, thinly sliced
one pound asparagus, tough ends snapped off
1/2 pound smoked bacon, sliced
4 eggs
salad dressing- spicy, mustardy vinaigrette is great with this rich salad

1. Begin by laying strips of bacon on a rimmed baking sheet. Place bacon in a cold oven and turn on to 350ºF*. Check on your bacon periodically as you prepare your eggs and wash your greens. It is ready to come out when it has little white bubbles on top. Drain bacon slices on paper towels or torn up paper bags.
2. Submerge eggs in water in a small saucepan. Place pan over high heat. Just as water begins to boil, turn off heat and cover pan. Time ten minutes and rinse in cold water to stop cooking.
3. While you wait for your eggs and bacon to cook, wash your salad greens. Fill your salad spinner or a large bowl with cool water and swish the greens around gently to allow any grit to settle to the bottom of the bowl. Drain by pulling handfuls of greens into the basket of your spinner (or into a clean pillowcase). Dump out water (look at all that grit!) and either spin dry, or take your pillowcase outside and swing gently overhead to fling water from the greens. Set aside however many greens your would like for this salad and store the rest in an airtight container in the fridge.
4. Rinse your asparagus and snap off tough stem ends that have a purple or white appearance.
5. Once your bacon is cooked and happily draining away, pour off your expertly rendered bacon fat into a jar for later use. Spread asparagus on the same baking sheet and give it a shake to distribute the residual bacon grease. Pop them back into the oven to roast for 8-10 minutes.
6. Peel and thinly slice your shallot and peel your now-cooled hard-cooked eggs.
7. Remove asparagus from oven and allow to cool slightly on the pan as you finish readying your ingredients.
8. Customize each bowl of greens with a sprinkle of shallot, several stalks of asparagus, crumbled bacon and egg.
*Starting the bacon in a cold oven allows the bacon fat to render instead of sear and you’ll be able to use it as a nice [local] cooking fat later.

Breakfast of Champions

Monday, May 05, 2008

Dear French Toast,

I love you.  I know I didn’t always, but now I do.  The line of crispiness around your edges, the squashy eggy goodness of your middle, your teamwork with local blueberries (frozen from a pick-your-own place in 2007) and local syrup.  I made your bread, and the phenomenal eggs are from a local farm for Winter Shares.  You are cozy and cheery and you made my day.

Love,
Eliza

Eat your weeds

Monday, April 28, 2008

Dandelions are popping up everywhere I look lately.  They are the bane of my existence in the garden, mostly because they’re so hard to permanently get rid of. Maybe I shouldn’t try so hard and, instead, use the overabundance of weeds to my advantage. In terms of foraging, the dandelion is useful in a variety of ways - from the leaves to the blossoms.

The most common use of the dandelion are the greens.  You’ll pay a small fortune for dandelion greens at the market - if you can even find them.  They’re great in salads as a bitter green, or fantastic cooked down in a saute or soup or warm salad.  Just walk out to your back yard or where ever dandelions are plentiful and pick the leaves off the plant!

I only recently discovered that you can eat the dandelion blossoms, as well!  Try fried dandelion blossoms, dandelion jelly, or dandelion wine.  You can even use dandelion root to make coffee.

Dandelions can even be used for home remedies - dandelion oil is used to treat rheumatism.

There’s treasure in those weeds you keep mowing over - be sure to pick those dandelion flowers and leaves before you mow next time!

Other dandelion recipes:

• Dandelion Salad with Lardons and Goat Cheese Phyllo Blossoms
• Creamed Dandelion Leaves
• Dandelion and Shiitake Calzone
• Crustless Greens Pie
• Pan roasted chicken with wilted dandelion leaves and bacon
• Cream of dandelion soup
• Dandelion syrup

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Pregnant women have to follow many rules. Some of them, like avoiding smoking, drinking and drug use make sense. Others, like avoiding soft cheeses, deli meats and sushi just seem unfair. This is my second pregnancy so I’m not quite as terrified as I was the first time and I haven’t quite followed all of the rules. I’ve never been a sushi lover so avoiding raw fish hasn’t concerned me. As for my indulgences, knowing that the majority of soft cheeses widely available in the United States are pasteurized I’ve continued my goat cheese and feta habit. And since Philadelphia is the hoagie capital of the world (in my opinion anyway- where else can you get a sandwich this good?) I haven’t exactly avoided lunchmeats.

Yesterday, in a quest to fill my freezer with some foods for when the baby arrives and use up the last of the fruits and vegetables frozen last summer, I spent a good portion of the day cooking. I made pancakes and muffins for breakfasts, a baked ziti with local sausage from Meadow Run Farm for dinners, and chocolate zucchini cake to eat, not freeze, just because I wanted to clear out the rest of last summer’s zucchini from my Red Earth Farm CSA. Of course no recipe calls for enough zucchini to clear out the stash in its entirety, and even after adding more than the recipe called for I still have three cups of frozen shredded zucchini ready to bake later this week, but the cake is just so good that I have to share the recipe.

The cake is so good that I think I may have accidentally eaten more batter than necessary, raw eggs and all, and everyone knows that you shouldn’t eat raw eggs, local or not, especially when you’re pregnant. But should you bake this cake you might want to throw caution to the wind and give the batter a little taste- just a little one because you may not be able to stop once you start. And perhaps by tasting the batter (and licking the bowl clean) you’ll be able to stop yourself from eating entirely too much cake once it’s baked, cooled and glazed.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake
adapted from Simply Recipes
1 1/2 cups regular all-purpose flour, unsifted
1 cup whole wheat flour, unsifted
1/2 cup cocoa
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup soft butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
3 cups coarsely shredded zucchini
1/2 cup milk
Glaze (directions follow)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
1 Combine the flours, cocoa, baking powder, soda, salt, and cinnamon; set aside.
2 With a mixer, beat together the butter and the sugars until they are smoothly blended. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. With a spoon, stir in the vanilla, orange peel, and zucchini.
3 Alternately stir the dry ingredients and the milk into the zucchini mixture.
4 Pour the batter (the batter will be very thick) into a greased and flour-dusted 10-inch tube pan or bundt pan. Bake in the oven for about 50 minutes (test at 45 minutes!) or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes; turn out on wire rack to cool thoroughly.
5 Drizzle glaze over cake.

Glaze: Mix together 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 1/2 Tablespoons milk, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until smooth.  If you really like orange flavoring omit the vanilla and add ½ teaspoon of orange zest.

This cake won’t last long. Now I need to find a good recipe for the last of the sour cherries.

Sorrel revisited

Thursday, April 24, 2008

There are a few things that over-wintered in the garden and are now going all crazy: the garlic, French sorrel, and chives.  Only the sorrel was a surprise.  And what a nice surprise it was! 

Sorrel sort of looks like spinach, but there’s no mistaking the flavor - it’s tart and lemony.  And it’s good for you!  Sorrel is high in vitamin C, vitamin A, iron, and fiber.

I tend to use sorrel more like a garnish, cut into chiffonade and used in sandwiches and with beets.  However, since I’ve got such an early and large supply of it, I’m looking into some other uses.  One interesting idea I came across is a sorrel pesto sauce for pasta.  Another really tempting idea is sorrel and goat cheese quiche.

Radishes will be one of the first crops we get when the CSA’s start shipping, and I found a recipe for butter-braised radishes with sorrel The combination of spicy and tart sounds delicious!

Here are some other ideas for using sorrel:

• Sorrel vichyssoise
• Sorrel, pea, and leek soup
• Halibut with tomato-sorrel sauce
• Smoked salmon benedict with sorrel sauce
• Sorrel dal

It’s definitely not too late to plant some sorrel in your own garden - as I discovered, it’s a perennial...so it will give you many years of lemony goodness!

Miso Delight

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

M made a lovely eat-from-the-freezer dish last night.  We’ve been trying to finish everything up, as our Lancaster Farm Fresh one and a half shares will be starting soon! 

This is from the Moosewood Cooks at Home, which we find a useful book for quick eats and very adjustable recipes. 

Miso Sauce

1/3 cup medium to light miso (M used yellow)
1/3 to 1/2 cup water
2 TB rice vinegar
1 tsp fresh grated ginger

Mix miso and 1/3 cup water until smooth.  Add vinegar and ginger, mix well.  Add a little more water if needed to make a saucelike consistency.

None of that (except the water--you must not forget the water, Best Beloved) was local, but M steamed yummy things from the freezer including kale, green beans, red and green peppers, and corn.  I made a grain mix (lentils, brown and mixed rice, job’s tears), and the whole thing was very good.  The sauce is quite sharp, but with frozen veg, zing can add summer zest.

p.s.  this was our first experiment with the ginger that we had (as Mollie Katzen suggested) put in white wine and put in the fridge so it wouldn’t go off before we could get to it--roaring success!

Shouldering the Burden of Easter Dinner

Sunday, April 06, 2008

If I had to select one ingredient in my kitchen as the most important, I think I would have to bypass the olive oil (even the single-estate, “crack oil” as we call it in our house), the pancetta, and sea salt.  I would eschew all of those for one simple, free ingredient that requires absolutely no storage space: time.  The more I cook, and the more I cook locally, the simpler I want my dishes to be.  (I have read that Tuscan cooking, in particular, adheres to a single herb in many dishes.  While that may seem rather austere, it is in the same spirit.) I want to extract the most flavor from each ingredient and balance that flavor within the whole.  The fewer ingredients, the less room for error or blandness, as each component is essential.  The most important ingredient, then, is really time.  If it is a quick saute or grill, then time spent preparing (or, “mise en place,” as Anthony Bourdain might call it) is crucial.  In other instances, as in this slow-roasted pork shoulder, everything is dependent upon time cooking. 

We ordered this beautiful, seventeen-pound, bone-in, skin-on-and-scored pork shoulder from the Fair Food Farmstand (thanks again, Ruth) only the Monday before Easter.  We picked it up on that Saturday and promptly set it in a roasting for roughly thirteen hours.  It was an incredibly simple preparation: some root vegetables in the bottom of the pan, which caramelized beautifully (and which I then pureed as part of a gravy); a simple rub of salt, pepper, and fennel seeds; and time, lots and lots of time.  Most importantly for me, as I am a frustrated perfectionist when it comes to cooking meat, I didn’t really need to worry about internal temperature or exact cooking time: i just waited for the meat to fall away from the bone, which it did quite beautifully. 

Obviously, this was more than enough food for the seven of us, but we were able to send everyone home with leftovers and still have two days worth of lunches for ourselves.  What better parting gift could their be? 

Near Eastern Meatloaf (by way of Lancaster County)

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Part 2 of my first order with the Meadow Run Farms buying club (see Tortilla Espanola for Part 1; see link at left under “meat” for information on the buying club) was ground beef and ground lamb for my favorite meatloaf. In fact, I joined the club practically on the basis of its having ground lamb because it can be hard to find, local or otherwise, in grocery stores.

The ground meat is packaged in flat pouches that make defrosting much faster than a brick-like package. I don’t know if that was intentional, but it works for me. What you’re looking at is a pound each of beef and lamb.
What makes this meatloaf “near eastern” is the kefte-like spice and other additions. I don’t measure when I make this, so amounts are approximate:
1/3C chopped parsley
1 small onion, minced (in this case it was 1/3 of a bermuda onion from Rineer Family Farms)
2 carrots, grated (on the big side of a box grater)
2T pomegranate molasses
1T Syrian kefte spice (a mixture that I buy at Kalustyan’s in NYC)
1/4C dried currants or zereshk (barberries, a Persian food that is slightly sour)
1t salt
(A handful of pinenuts is a nice addition, too.)
To this, you work the meats in with your hands. (If you want to check the seasoning before you bake the loaf, take a little and fry it in a pan for an approximation.)

Bake at 350 for about 1 hour 15 minutes. This meat yielded a nice juicey loaf (the carrots help with this, too) with a wonderful lamb flavor. Could you go 100% lamb? Absolutely. Enjoy!

With April come violets!

Friday, March 28, 2008

I’ve heard it said that April is the cruelest month here in Pennsylvania in terms of locally grown produce.  But with April usually comes violets.  Around my house we generally tend to start see them popping up around mid-April through the end of May.  Most people don’t look at wild violets growing in the yard and think “Hey, I think I’ll eat those!” but foraging for wild violets is a sweet way to get in some early locally grown food.

Yeah, ‘sweet’.  Get it?  I make candied violets every Spring.

True, candied violets don’t taste like much except, well, sugar.  But if you’re decorating a cake, they’re useful to have.  Or they’re good just as a snack.  And they last practically forever.

Here’s how you do it -

1. First, go out into the yard or someone else’s yard or wherever violets are growing and pick a couple big handfuls.  Whatever you do, make sure you pick them from places you know haven’t been treated with pesticides or herbicides or any other potentially dangerous chemicals.
2. Wash the violets very gently.  You can soak the flowers in cold water for a little while or gently swish them in water, as you prefer.  Before you start candying the violets, though, you need to make sure the violets are completely dry...so be sure you give them enough time to air dry.
3. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
4. Make egg wash using egg whites from two room temperature eggs with a pinch of water.  Whisk the egg white/water mixture until it’s just very lightly a little frothy.
5. Crush a half cup of granulated sugar with a mortar and pestle.  It doesn’t have to be like powder, but it should be smaller granules

6. Grab a small paint brush and a violet.  Dip the brush into the egg white and very gently but thoroughly coat the violet flower on all sides.  This works best if you hold the violet by the stem.
7. Spoon sugar very gently over the violet to coat it on all sides.
8. Lay the violet on a cookie sheet and very gently remove the stem.
9. Dry them in your 200 degree oven for 20 minutes.  Remove from oven and let them cool completely, and then store in an air tight container.

Even more beef stew!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Beef stew must be catching!  After seeing Allison’s beef stew, and Emily’s homage to beef stew, well, I hauled out the three pounds of beef cubes from Natural Acres that I’ve been hoarding.

My stew differs from Allison’s and Emily’s in that it contains beer.  I’m convinced that everything is better with the addition of beer!  And as I like to support local farmers, I also like to support local breweries - I used a bottle of stout from Yards Brewery.

Also local: onions from Landisdale Farm, carrots from Tuscarora Coop, rosemary from Overbrook Herb Farm, flour from Daisy, homemade lamb stock from some bones from Jamison Farm, and garlic.

2 Tbsp. oil of your choice
3 lb. beef cubes/stew meat
2 c. chopped onion
4 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tsp. chopped rosemary
2 Tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
2 Tbsp flour
1 bottle of stout
14 oz beef or lamb stock
1 lb of carrots, cut into chunks

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Season beef with salt and pepper and brown beef [maybe 6 minutes is all you need].  Remove from pot and add onions, garlic, and herbs to the Dutch oven.  Season with salt and pepper; reduce heat to medium and saute about 4 or 5 minutes.  Add in paste and flour, stir for a minute.  Add beer; stir for a few minutes and scrape up any bits stuck to the bottom of the pot.

Add stock and beef; bring to a simmer.  Partially cover the Dutch oven, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for 45 minutes.  If the stew gets too thick, you can cut it with red wine.  Add carrots and simmer another 45 minutes.  Again, you can continue to cut the stew with red wine or more beer if it gets too thick or boils down too much..  Season with salt and pepper and eat up!

This stew is guaranteed to warm you up!  It sounds like we’re in for a few more cold days before Spring officially is sprung, so now might be a good time to try it out!

Ode to Buttermilk

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I tend to think of the seasons affecting my diet strictly in terms of what local foods are available, but, really, the relationship is more subtle than that.  The seasons also prompt me to want to certain foods: a crisp fall morning makes me reach for a commensurately crisp, tart apple; the first warm days of spring have me looking for baby lettuces and asparagus; an oppressive summer day is alleviated by an heirloom tomato salad.  In the winter, I crave pureed and mashed root vegetable, meat stews, and freshly baked bread.  About fifteen minutes after slipping the dough into the oven, I can start to smell the baking, which soon permeates our small home.  Suddenly, gas-heated, forced air doesn’t seem so stale, and cold, dry hands will be soon be warmed by a steaming chunk - who can wait to slice?

Being a limited baker (both in skill and interest), I set out to improve my skill and deepen my reserve.  Thankfully, each of the three recipes I attempted was a success - not always a gaurantee when it comes to baking.  More importantly, in my third year of Farm to City’s Winter Harvest, I have finally discovered buttermilk.  I suppose I eschewed it in the past because I perceived it as having limited use and spoiling quickly.  Thankfully, I was wrong. 

In the first, instance, I made English muffins, straight out of the The Bread Bakers Apprentice. (An indispensable guide that has made me a much better baker than I was.) Here, the buttermilk’s acidity melded with the salt and sugar of the dough, tasting like something between a savory muffin and a bread.  The second was buttermilk biscuits from the King Arthur Flour website, a perfect accompaniment to poached eggs and cottage bacon from Meadow Run Farm and sautéed spinach from Winter Harvest.  Here, the buttermilk was the defining ingredient: it’s creamy sharpness the most important factor.  The third was scones from the Metropolitan Bakery Cookbook, using half white flour and half spelt flour from the Fair Food Farmstand and butter and maple sugar also from Winter Harvest.  Although much sweeter than the previous uses, the buttermilk was equally fantastic. 

With Spring rapidly approaching, I may be losing the urge to bake such breads, but next November, I suspect the cold weather will prompt me again. 

Mushroom Chinese Dumplings

We bought these beatiful oyster mushrooms (with a couple of trumpets) at Weaver’s Way Coop last week. 

We had some tenants many years ago from China, and they taught us how to make dumplings.  I was terrible at the rolling out of the dough into circles, so we long ago switched to bought dumpling wrappers, but even so, it’s a wonderful, cheap treat. 

For the filling, you can use pork (as we were taught), or veggies (as we use now, since we are now vegetarians).  Yan Heng and Qing were vague about amounts, so I will be, too!

Jiaozi (Gyoza) or Chinese Dumplings

Some mushrooms, oil, onion, ginger, soy sauce, an egg, some kind of greens (bok choy, kale, etc.) - dice, mix them all together, and then fill the wrappers. 

I’m afraid you’ll have to bear with the drawings I made in my cookbook for the next bit:

#1 Pinch top of wrapper together and push in from one side

#2 After pinching closed one flap, mash the other flap into the side of the dumpling.  Then repeat for the other side.

#3 The finished dumpling should be kind of like this (the little marks are pinch lines):

To cook them, boil up a bunch of water in a big pot, and put them in, many at a time (my recipe says 30, but I probably usually do half that at a time).  After the water boils again, add a cup or so of cold water.  Wait for it to boil, and add another cup of cold water.  When it boils again, take one out and test it.  This is all particularly important if your dumplings have raw pork in them, but it gets the veggie ones cooked nicely, too.

A couple of hints: 
--The more dumplings you wrap, the easier it gets.  When I started, the wrapping was the most overwhelming part, and now I’ve done it so often I think of it as the watch-TV-and-wrap-dumplings cozy part of the process.
--For the vegetarian version, I usually throw in some reconstituted TSP (textured soy protein) or okara (what remain after we make soy milk) to bind the mixture and give it a meaty texture.

Finally, I just wanted to note that dumplings in a restaurant cost about $1 per dumpling.  Half a pound of ground pork or a few mushrooms plus the rest of the very cheap mixture make about 60 dumplings.  We freeze the leftover ones (when there are any--think of it--as many dumplings as you want!) and M takes them for lunches.

Beef Stew to Soothe

Friday, February 29, 2008

As I was getting ready to head out into the cold winter air a few mornings ago, a noise from outside forced me to pause in the middle of what I was doing. Songbirds. Since the Winter Solstice in December, the shift of the daylight hours has been growing more perceptible each week, but to me there is no surer sign that spring is coming than the return of the songbird’s twitter outside my window or the sigh of a mourning dove as I walk to catch my train.

In Reading Terminal Market, the Chilean grapes, nectarines, peaches and plums are piled high in seductive, if stony, pyramids. Their presence is a reminder that just as the spring thaw has yet to reach Philadelphia, it must be high summer in some other part of the world. As tempting as they are, I know that their beauty is only skin deep and I pass them over with few exceptions, reminding myself that spring strawberries are but a few months away. Bracing myself against the lingering winter chill, my walk home makes me feel decidedly less optimistic that I will find signs of the new season around the corner.  Until I can wholeheartedly announce the arrival of Spring and her flowers, lettuces, and eventual asparagus, I will content myself and warm my kitchen with cold weather fare. Banishing the chill that seeps in at the edges of the poorly-sealed windows in our West Philly rental is this recipe for beef stew. Originally printed in Maxim “a mindless, but funny magazine for mindless, but funny, guys” and gradually tweaked and adapted by my father, this stew is remarkably good. The recipe dictates to braise the beef and roast the vegetables separately from one another, a vital cue that allows the vegetables to retain their textural integrity and even concentrates their flavor. Served over egg noodles, it is enough to satisfy if not the eternal longing for spring, than at least the more momentary longing for supper.

Rod Teel’s “Pot of Gold” Beef Stew
Adapted from Maxim magazine
This recipe is somewhat time and labor intensive so it’s not ideally suited to a weeknight supper. It does reheat beautifully however, so make a batch over the weekend and you’ll be able to enjoy more than a few weeknight suppers from it.

3 Tb. Canola or olive oil
1 cup flour
2 ½ cups beef chuck, cubed
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small shallot or red onion, finely chopped
2 cups dry red wine
2 cups good beef stock
1 handful parsley, chopped
1 bay leaf
salt & pepper
spice rub (mix 1 teaspoon each granulated garlic, paprika, cayenne, salt, oregano, thyme, you will have some leftover)

2 cups carrots, cubed
1 cup parsnips, cubed
4 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered
3 large potatoes, cubed
1 ½ cups onions, diced
1 cup onion, large wedges
3 slices bacon, small dice
1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste
2 Tb. Butter
1 Lb. cremini or button mushrooms, quartered
¼ cup heavy cream
2 Tb. Flour

1. Preheat oven to 325º.
2. Heat oil in a Dutch Oven over moderate heat. Season 1 cup of flour with salt, pepper and 1 Tb. of spice rub. Season beef with salt, pepper, and spice rub. Dredge beef cubes in seasoned flour and brown on all sides in hot oil. Be careful not to overcrowd the oil or the meat will steam. Work in batches removing meat to a plate. When all meat is browned, add minced garlic, shallot and cook for a minute. Add meat back and pour over stock, wine, parsley and bay leaf. Cover and bake for two hours.
3. Once beef is in the oven, combine carrots, parsnip, potatoes, onion wedges and garlic chunks in a shallow roasting pan or baking sheet. Season with salt, pepper and spice rub and drizzle over a tablespoon of olive oil. Mix and spread out. Roast alongside the meat, uncovered, for 1 ½ to 2 hours, until tender. Remove when tender if beef is not yet finished.
4. Sauté bacon in a dry skillet until fat is rendered. Remove and set aside. Sauté diced onions in bacon fat until soft. Mix in tomato paste and bacon and cook, stirring for a minute.
5. Half-an-hour before the beef is due to be finished, stir in the bacon mixture, re-cover and roast for the remaining time.
6. Melt 1 Tb. butter in a large skillet (same one as the bacon is fine), and sauté the mushrooms over medium heat, seasoning them with salt and pepper until browned. Remove from skillet and set aside.
7. Add other Tb. butter to skillet and melt, sprinkling 2 Tb. flour over to make a light roux. Cook flour in butter, stirring, until it has turned a light caramel color. Add cream and ¾ liquid from the beef pot. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring, to make a thickened sauce.
8. Mix sauce, beef, roasted vegetables, and mushrooms into Dutch Oven to combine. Serve with egg noodles and additional fresh parsley, if you like.