Nov 16, 2008

beef and vegetable stew


Last Sunday I found all kinds of fruits and veggies that looked too good to pass up. Beautiful stalks of chard, and flavorful fall sugar snap peas, yukon gold potatoes, lovely orange beets, a gigantic red pepper, an heirloom tomato, and a couple chilies and shallots rounded out the veggies. We both love fruit, and eat a lot of it each week either during the day at work, or as a yummy dessert. Apples of course are still crisp and ripe right now, and we picked up bunches of grapes, several pears, and for the first time a couple satsuma oranges.

Dinners this week have included a vegetable and beef stew, roasted beet and pea salad, and beef tacos with lightly fried potatoes, chard, red pepper and chilies. The beef and veggie stew was a combination of all the veggies here, plus some left over from last week.

Recipe for Sunday Beef and Vegetable Stew

1 pound stew beef, cubed into edible sizes
Chopped veggies galore - I used some shallots, garlic, celery, potatoes, left over green beans, carrots, bell pepper, a Chile, and several leaves of chard chopped up.
Beef broth
Spices

First brown the beef in a large soup pot with just a touch of olive oil. Scoop the beef out to rest while you slowly fry the shallots, and garlic until they begin to soften. Add celery, and slowly add remainder of veggies, minus the chard, a enough water that the veggies don't burn but can cook together nicely. After about 10 minutes, as the flavors begin to meld, add the beef back into the pot, and add a couple chugs of beef broth. Bring to a boil and the simmer.

Simmer the stew for several hours, being sure to check the water level every so often. Once the beef is tender to your likeness or about 30 minutes before serving add the chard and take the lid off the pot. This way the chard will remain semi-firm when served, and some of the liquid evaporated off making the stew nice and thick.

On Sunday I also tried my hand at bread baking, and served the stew with a couple slices of homemade brown bread.
(photography by: alison clayshulte)


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