Lamb Stew

St. Patrick's Day just came and went again for another year, and I repeated a successful lamb stew from last year. I found a basic recipe on Closet Cooking (well-suited for my NYC kitchen as that was microscopic) and tweaked it. The basics? Begin with good looking lamb (yes, this is a bit of a beauty contest) and select your veggies. Make sure to have good-quality beef stock on hand if you don't make your own. You'll want a good sized pot for this as well.

This recipe calls for Guinness or another stout beer, but you can use more beef stock if you do not want to use the beer. The original recipe called for adding the potatoes and carrots later in the cooking so they're not as cooked, but I like to add them earlier on. It's a preference thing so go with whatever you want. As for the lamb, I was fortunate enough to have gone to a store with a real butcher so I asked for lamb stew meat and got some of the best looking lamb I'd ever seen. The meat will flavor the whole stew so you want it to be good.

After making it once, you might see some tweaks you'd like to make. Go for it! Here's the recipe so you can get started:

Lamb Stew (modified by Anne Lane)

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon oil
1.5 pounds lamb, give or take (cut into bite sized pieces)
2 onions (roughly chopped)
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons flour
1 Guinness (or other dark stout)
* beef stock
1 tablespoon rosemary (chopped)
1 tablespoon thyme (chopped-- pull it off of the woody stem first!)
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
4 white potatoes (cut into bite sized pieces)
8 carrots (cut into bite sized pieces)
1 handful parsley (chopped) garnish-- optional

Heat the oil in a large pot. Add the lamb and brown on each side. I remove the browned pieces from the pan and place them on a plate so as to avoid crowding.

Add the onions and saute until tender, about 5-7 minutes. It will take less time for this if you're using a cast iron pot. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Sprinkle in the flour and stir. Add the Guinness and enough beef stock to cover.

Add the rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper, plus the potatoes and carrots if you want them more done. Add more beef stock if you add the veggies now.

Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer uncovered until the lamb is fork tender, about 1-2 hours. Check it every so often for seasoning.

If you haven't already, add the potatoes and carrots and some more beef stock to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until they are tender, about 20-60 minutes depending on cut.

Serve in bowls with parsley (if using) and Irish soda bread on the side or some other good bread. Enjoy!!

Brunswick Stew

Growing up, Brunswick Stew was always a favorite. My godmother, Mary Virginia, always had a fantastic recipe. Recently, she shared it with my mom, who shared it with me. The best part? It's still as wonderful and comforting and yet, it's not a difficult recipe! I'm posting her original recipe, along with my tweaks, which someone said make it Brunswitt Stew. From the reviews I got at the church supper, I'll take it. And without further ado, Brunswick Stew!

Brunswick Stew a la Mary Virginia

- 1 package (4 halves) chicken breasts, with skin and bones-- add more water if you find a value pack with 5 halves!

- 1 can (28 oz.) diced tomatoes

- 4 medium potatoes, diced (I used red most recently, and they were lovely. Yukon Golds would be delicious as well.)

- 1 average sized onion, chopped

- 2 cans butterbeans (I used one bag of frozen butterbeans, aka baby limas, and it was perfect.)

- 2 cans whole-grain white corn (I used 2 of the cans of white shoepeg corn, which are small but have a lot of corn in them!)

- 1 stick margarine (I switched to butter, just the regular salted variety.)

- salt and pepper to taste

- small amount of sugar (which I didn't add because I didn't think it was needed, plus I like my stew more savory.)

ALW additions:

- chicken stock if you need a little extra liquid later in cooking (I used unsalted.)

- tomato paste (the kind in the tube, which you should always have on hand, unless you cannot eat tomatoes!)

Salt and pepper each chicken breast, then cover with water in a large pot. You only want water to cover, but add more liquid later if you feel you need it or want a more brothy soup.

Add some more salt and pepper to the water as the chicken cooks as this is making your chicken stock. You want it flavorful!

When cooked, remove the chicken breasts and set aside to cool. Skim the stock of surface fat (schmaltz!). Save the schmaltz if you'll make authentic matzo ball later; otherwise, let it cool and trash it.

Add the tomatoes, potatoes, butterbeans, and onions to the stock. Let simmer.

While this is cooking, take the cooled chicken and peel off the skin. You can either chop the chicken or simply pull it off of the bone into small pieces. You can guess which one I did.

Add the chicken back to the pot and bring to a boil. Let cook until the potatoes are tender.

Add the corn, being careful to stir the pot frequently as the corn will stick to the pan otherwise.

Check for seasonings (here's where you would add the chicken stock and/or tomato paste, should you feel you need it.) and then ladle into bowls to serve. It's delicious with ham biscuits or cornbread on the side.

This reheats very well, often tasting even better the next day, and also freezes beautifully.

Beef Stew with Cabernet

A cold, snowy day calls for some comfort food. As I was doing my shopping earlier today, I ran into one of my parishioners who was in search of beef stew meat. Call it a light bulb, a "Eureka!", or my stomach's articulating what it wanted, but beef stew sounded just perfect, and the store had stew meat! I quickly grabbed carrots, onion, celery, beef broth, and some wine so that I, too, could enjoy this cold-weather favorite. Jackie was going to use her slow-cooker, but I knew I wanted to first brown the beef and then cook it in my dutch oven, mainly because I lack patience for these sorts of things.

So here it is: Beef Stew with Cabernet. It's pretty free-form, with a few basics. the longer you cook it, the thicker it will get. If you're impatient like I am, cornstarch comes in really handy. I dried the cubes of beef with a paper towel and then rolled them in a mixture of flour-black pepper-garlic powder-kosher salt, shaking off the excess. I browned the meat before adding the remaining ingredients, but you don't have to, although it adds flavor.

Beef Stew with Cabernet

- 1.5 pounds of beef stew meat

- 3 ribs of celery, diced

- 1 onion the size of your fist, roughly chopped

-1/2 bag of baby Yukon Gold potatoes, or whatever small potatoes you'd like, cut into quarters (about 2 cups' worth)

- about half a small bag of baby carrots, each carrot cut into thirds

- 1-32 oz carton low sodium beef broth

- roughly 4 tbsp olive oil (enough to coat the dutch oven to brown the meat and then saute celery, onion, and carrot-- aka mirepoix)

- about 1/2 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, depending upon your taste and how much liquid you'll need

- flour for dredging (about 1/2 cup or so), plus whatever you want to use to season it

- salt and pepper to taste (and please use kosher salt as it is harder to oversalt as the grains are larger)

- 2 bay leaves

- cornstarch if you know you're short on time or impatient (about 3 heaping tsp)

Wash your veggies. Chop the onion and carrots, and dice the celery, placing them into a small bowl. Get them as close to the same size as possible. Quarter your potatoes.

Combine the flour and seasonings on a plate so that you can dredge the beef. Dry the beef cubes with a paper towel, then dredge them in the flour mixture. Place the dredged cubes on a plate or wire rack as you add olive oil to your dutch oven. Make sure to really get the excess flour mixture off as too much can lead to burning in the pan!

Add about 2 tbsp of olive oil to your dutch oven to begin over a medium-low (if you're using cast iron) or medium burner. Once it is hot, add several cubes of beef at a time to the dutch oven to brown, turning them with tongs after about 2 minutes. **Do not crowd the beef into the pan!!!** This will make the beef steam instead of brown, and that is not what you want. Patience will ensure some good-looking beef cubes. Make sure to keep an eye on the beef so that there is no burning, wiping the dutch oven with a paper towel to remove the excess flour if needed. When the cubes are browned, place them onto a plate.

Add the onion, carrots, and celery to the pan, adding a bit of olive oil beforehand to make sure they have enough to saute. Once they are colorful and the onions translucent, add about a cup of the wine and deglaze the pan, using your tongs to scrape up all of the good bits.

Add the beef and potatoes to the dutch oven along with the beef broth, salt, and pepper. The liquid should cover the beef and veggies, but if it doesn't, add some water. Add about another cup of the wine, then cover the dutch oven and bring to a boil for about 10 minutes.

Stir the mixture, then reduce the heat to low. Cover and let the stew simmer for about 30 minutes. Check to see how it is thickening and check the seasonings. Adjust accordingly, then set your timer for another 30 minutes. Follow this procedure until the meat is fork-tender, the stew is seasoned as you want it, and it is as thick as you'd like.

I find the meat is as tender as I like it after about 2 hours of cooking, but I thicken the stew with cornstarch. The way to do this is to add a teaspoon (or a heaping teaspoon in my case) to some cold liquid, mix well, then gradually add it to your hot stew. Bring it to a boil, then let it cook for a bit. I did two heaping teaspoons of cornstarch in water (making a slurry) after about an hour and a half of cooking, then let it cook for a half hour longer. At that point, I mixed another heaping teaspoon of cornstarch with a cup of wine, adding it as I had the previous cornstarch slurry. Let it cook for about 10 more minutes, and then you should be good to go!

Adjust the seasonings per your preference. Enjoy!