Stewtorial

This morning, after breakfast, I decided to make the morning a little productive and get a stew in the oven.  While stews are renowned as an easy meal to throw together - simple ingredients, minimal preparation, then just allow time to cook for a few hours - I never used to find them so easy.  This is because I would try too hard:  multiple fresh herbs, pancetta, several types of vegetable, slicing everything uniformly.  My stews were still relatively simple, but they were not the 'throw everything in and forget about it' type of dish I had hoped for.

Fast forward a few years, and I have chilled out a little.  I now know that if I use the absolute basic ingredients - beef, onions, carrots, potatoes, celery, tinned tomato, some stock (or not), some wine (or not) - my stew will still be absolutely delicious.  While it is fine, of course, to add elements such as fresh herbs, bacon, button mushrooms, cognac, and to dice everything in perfect cubes, it is still completely, 100 per cent worth making a stew with bare basic elements.

A stew at its most basic can be put together, first thing in the morning, without really concentrating.  Some mindless chopping, a little browning, some peeling and stirring.  This barely-there effort will reward you, a few hours later, with the most beautifully fragrant kitchen, and enough delicious beef stew for several meals - on it's own, with mashed potato or rice, or in a simple pie.

This morning, I made my stew while The Daddy played his guitar with Tabitha in the living room.  I stood in the kitchen, slicing and chopping, gazing out the window into the foggy garden, watching the cats wrestle, listening to Tabby 'singing' along to the guitar.  I sipped some tea.  It was a thoroughly relaxing morning, not at all arduous, and I now have enough stew to serve roughly twelve generous serves - all for under $25, or less than $2 a serve.

So I will share with you this basic stew tutorial - a 'Stewtorial' - in case you are not yet a convert to stew cookery...

You will need:

• 2kg of stewing beef - I like Gravy Beef, AKA Shin Beef, which is basically the Osso Bucco cut without the bone.  Chuck Steak, from the shoulder, is also excellent.
• 2 large or three smallish potatoes
• 3 carrots
• 3 stalks of celery
• 2 onions
• A can of whole or crushed tomatoes
• 2 glasses of red wine
• Around 500ml beef stock, water, or a combination
• 1/4 cup plain flour, a tablespoon or so of paprika, salt and pepper
• 2 bay leaves

Peel the potatoes, and chop into roughly 1-inch cubes:

Peel the carrots, and cut into roughly 2cm slices:

Chop the celery stalks into 1-2cm pieces:

Peel and quarter the onions.  Now, this may be my favourite part of stew - I absolutely despise chopping onions.  I have incredibly sensitive eyes, and find that onions always make my eyes sting, stream and burn.  So any recipe requiring quartered onions instead of chopped or sliced onions is tops in my book!  Otherwise, I tend to chop my onions in the food processor.

This is an excellent recipe if the worms in your worm farm are a little peckish - a mountain of scraps from carrot, celery and potatoes.  It is not a bad idea to blitz all of your veggie scraps in the food processor, if you happen to have it out, because the worms find it much easier, and it will turn into worm compost much quicker, with less chance of mould, if it's in a fine chop, instead of large pieces.  But it's fine to just dump it in to the worm farm - or compost heap - as is, of course:

Back to the stew.  Combine the flour, paprika, salt and pepper in a large bowl:

Many butchers will sell you stewing beef already cubed.  Even if you want a different cut - for example, my butcher sells cubed chuck, but I generally prefer gravy/shin - most butchers will happily cube it up while you wait.  Their knives are much heavier and sharper then most of ours, so it makes sense to let them do the hard work.

Last night, however, I got stuck buying my meat at the supermarket (long story), so my gravy beef came in slices of shin.  No matter - each slice of shin needs to get cut into around 4 pieces, each piece roughly 1 - 2 inches square.

Here is the chopped beef - all meat for stewing has plenty of fat and sinew.  Fat and sinew melt away during the slow cooking process, turning the meat into the tender, slightly gelatinous beef that makes stew so delicious:

Toss each of the pieces of beef in the flour mixture, coating well, then shaking off the excess.  Just like when I make schnitzel and end up with fat crumbed fingers, I always used to get gummy, floury hands from this, so now I always use tongs.  A simple thing, but saves time and annoyance:

2kg of gravy beef, coated in flour/paprika/salt/pepper:

Coat the bottom of a heavy saucepan or enamel casserole (I use a 26cm round Le Creuset, roughly 5.3 litres, though ideally this would be done in a slightly larger pot) with a generous amount of olive oil, and heat to medium-high heat.

Brown the beef, in batches, so that the pieces to not touch in the pan - it is important to do this in small enough batches, as you want the high heat to seal and brown the meat quickly.  If you overcrowd the pan, the meat will take longer to brown, and will start to toughen.

Once the bottom of each piece is well browned, turn the pieces over and brown the other sides.

For me, 2kg of beef requires roughly 4 - 5 batches in the 26cm pot.  You may need to add a dash more olive oil as you go, and you may need to adjust the heat a little as you go.  When each batch is well browned, remove and set aside in a large bowl:

By the time all of the beef is browned, the bottom of your pot will be pretty nasty!  Lots of almost-burnt flour and meat remnants firmly stuck to the bottom.  This is good, this is what you want.  Now you need to tip your two glasses of wine into the pan and, over high heat, scrape vigorously with your wooden spoon (do not use metal in an enamel pan).  As the wine comes to a boil (cooking off the alcohol), the stuck-on bits at the bottom will easily come away, deglazing from the pot, until you have a basically clean bottom:

Now, tip into the pot with the wine all of the beef, its juices, and all of the vegetables:

 

Add the tomatoes and the stock / water:

Give it all a brief mix - you can see that my 5.3 litre pot just barely fits all of this in!

Add your bay leaves, and poke them down into the mixture.  I never used to see the point of bay leaves - I'd only smelt supermarket bay, from a jar, and it never had any discernible smell.  Then one day I bought a large bunch of freshly dried bay leaves from the farmers' market - wow, what a beautiful aroma!  Now I am biding my time until I have room to grow my own bay tree.  Apparently, it grows very well in a large pot.

Bring the stew to a gentle simmer on the stove, and then transfer into a preheated 180 degree oven OR a preheated 130 degree oven.  In a 180 degree oven, the stew will need 2 - 3 hours.  In a 130 degree oven, the stew can happily cook for 5+ hours.

If you are cooking at 180 degrees, it is worth checking on the stew every hour - give it a stir, make sure there is still plenty of liquid (if it is starting to look dry, add a little more water or stock), and check that it is gently bubbling - if it is boiling, or bubbling too rapidly, turn down the heat a little.

The stew is done when the meat is so tender that it can be easily pulled apart with a fork or spoon.  It should be melting, and require almost no chewing.

Stews improve with age, so it is worth letting this cool, then keeping it in your fridge for a couple of days - you can remove any solidified fat that comes to the surface, if you prefer.  You can then reheat some of the stew, then freeze the rest in appropriately sized portions - it will happily keep in the freezer for a few months or so.

In fact, you can use one or more of the servings to make a pie, just to mix things up a little.  At its simplest, you simply pile the stew into a pie dish (or a few smaller ramekins) and then cover the top with a layer of defrosted puff pastry (all butter puff, which is easy to find and tastes a million times better).  Cut a few slits in the top, for the steam to escape, brush lightly with milk or melted butter, and bake at 220 degrees Celsius for as long as it takes for the top to get crispy and golden (25 or so minutes, generally).  You could also first line your pie dish with some shortcrust pastry, if you'd like.

This dish would work well in a pressure cooker - the entire cooking time would be well under an hour.  Sadly, I do not yet own a pressure cooker (not enough kitchen space for any new pots), but if I did, I would certainly have used it.  If you would like a pressure cooker, I recommend this Australian website - http://www.pressurecooker.com.au/  They have an excellent range, all for hugely discounted prices, and are really helpful over the phone or email.  You can only ever fill the pressure cooker up 2/3 full, so for this stew (which is a truly enormous quantity) you would need something of 9 litres or more.  My choice would probably be the Tefal Clipso Control Plus 10 Litre, or the Fissler Vitavit Comfort 10 Litre.

You can also cook stew over very low heat on the stove for a couple of hours - you want it to be barely simmering.  A 'simmering mat' from a cooking store can help you achieve a very low heat, if your stove won't go low enough.

Once you've cooked the basic stew once or twice, you might want to try some other variations - you could add button mushrooms (just for the last hour or so), shallots, some sliced garlic, some cubed speck, bacon or pancetta (I'd brown it first, personally), some fresh thyme, oregano or rosemary, a few slivers of lemon rind, some olives, or some roasted eggplant/capsicum/zucchini (roast it and then add to the stew for the last hour).

It is worth remembering that, per kilogram of beef, you'll generally need around 3 cups / 750ml of liquid.  I tend to use a mixture of tinned tomatoes, wine and beef or veal stock.  As long as you have this ratio right, you can pretty much do whatever you want - even adding no vegetables, just stewing the meat in some stock, wine and tomato, with some herbs, for a lovely pie filling, or to shred as a sort of ragu for pasta.

We didn't end up eating this tonight - we had dinner at my parents', and I like to leave a stew to sit for at least a day in the fridge - so I will post a photo of the finished product tomorrow night.  I had a sneaky taste, though, and it is delicious.

Back in the swing of things

Tabitha is now completely over her jetlag.  Coming back to Australia was much worse (for her, and for all of us) than it was going over to the US.  It only took a day on the way over to settle back into our regular routine, however coming home, there were a couple nights with 3am wakeups, ready to play and take on the day.

The advice I have been given, which served us well, is this:  If the baby wakes in the night, let them play, but keep things quiet and dark, so that their body clock is still registering that it is night time.  SO from 3am - 4:30am, we had her in bed, quietly playing with some stuffed toys, in near darkness.  As soon as she started to look tired again, I put her back to bed, and she went down perfectly.

Likewise, if the baby is incredibly sleepy during the day, let them have some longer sleeps / sleep more often, but keep their room well lit with natural sunlight, so that even while they sleep, their body clock is registering that it is daytime.  We did this, and within a couple of days, things were back to normal.

Tabby was, however, sleeping much more heavily during the day, so I was able to sneak in and snap a couple of photos of her asleep, which I have not been able to do since she was a tiny baby.  She is a tummy sleeper - here she is crashed out in her Grobag in the afternoon:

Was quite disappointed by the cheesecakes we had in New York, so felt compelled to make one of my own.  For a change, I topped it with blueberries - just frozen ones, defrosted.  Added a nice sweet pop of flavour.  I will do this again.

Plans for Tabitha's first birthday party, on Sunday week, are in full swing.  I must say that it has been challenging to come home from a month overseas, and have a birthday party with 60-odd guests two weeks later!  I am keeping things simple - sandwiches, cupcakes, balloons, champagne.  We haven't invited everyone we know, limiting the guests to a few of our friends, close family, and Tabitha's gorgeous baby friends and their wonderful parents.  I hope that she will have a good time!

I found some very sweet cupcake cases.  The range of this sort of thing available now is incredible!  I remember just a few years back, being thrilled to find plain coloured cases.  I am not really a big buttercream fan - I like the look of it, but I always scrape half of it off when I eat a cupcake.  Too rich for me.  My mother and I have always preferred to ice cupcakes in classic icing-sugar-water-colouring icing.  I believe this is unfashionable these days, but I don't care!

I had these sweet invitations made from a wonderful woman on Etsy.  I fell in love with the image - it is very 'us' for Tabitha and I, with the baking and the kitten and the 50s feel.  The woman did matching cupcake toppers and a little hanging banner as well.

I'm still not sure what The Daddy and I will get Tabitha for her birthday.  Perhaps some nice books - she does love a story!  She is certainly still at the age where she will be more interested in the wrappings than the gifts.

Having a 'winter baby' is challenging for birthdays - I am a winter child myself (in fact, my birthday is two days after Tabby's, and the day before her party.  I suppose I will spend my birthday baking cakes instead of going out to dinner - probably for the next 16 or so years of my life, at least!).  Having a birthday in winter means that you must plan something indoors - no parks, no beach, no outdoor activities, no farm adventures.  Parties need to be in a house, hall or indoor venue.  

My mother was brilliantly creative, so I never felt that I missed out (circus theme with face painters, princess party with enormous gingerbread castle, nursery rhyme party with lots of games and songs, 50s party with a juke box, pajama party with 30 guests... and always the most impressive cakes!), but I do remember always being quite cross that I couldn't wear a 'proper party dress', which to me meant something with short puffed sleeves.  It was always long sleeves or a skivvy under my party dress!  And Tabitha is doomed suffer the same fate - thick woolen tights under her woolen dress for this year's party.

I suppose I ought to start brainstorming fun indoor party ideas for the coming years...

Washington, DC

Our last week of the trip was spent in Washington, DC.  Our trip was actually cut short a couple of days, as we had to fly home early due to a family illness back home, so we only had 4 days in DC instead of 6.  Nonetheless, we managed to cram in a fair amount!  DC is such an interesting place to visit - full of images we are so familiar with (the Capitol Building, the White House, Lincoln Memorial etc), which are strange to see in real life.  Also, DC is home to the greatest overall collections of art and museum artifacts in the United States, with the massive and multi-building Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art and many others.  And - amazingly - nearly every gallery and museum in DC is free to visit!

Here is Tabitha posing in 'the Oval Office':

And trying to climb her way into the White House - the guards did not seem at all concerned.  They obviously don't realise what a threat she could be!  She would happily cuddle the First Dog, Bo, to death.  Her outfit is very '50s American' - a short, puffed sleeve dress, over frilly knickers poking out the bottom, with Mary Jane type shoes.

One of the many squirrels which play on the lawns of the White House came through the fence to visit us!  He sat nice and still, posing for a few photographs.  He was easily within patting distance - though The Daddy did not allow Tabitha or I to pat him, sadly.

We asked a fellow tourist to take a photo of us in front of the White House - however I don't think she quite mastered the zoom lens.  You will have to take my word for it that this is, in fact, the White House.

Here you go - since our photo is a little dodgy, I will share some other family's photo:

Apparently, the FBI Building is the 'ugliest building in DC'.  It is a large, boxy concrete structure.  Along the concrete slabs, there are small holes drilled out.  Why?  Because they had planned on covering the building with marble!  So they drilled the holes, and then...  Nothing.  Strange!

At the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, we saw the Hope Diamond.  It is 45.52 carats of deep blue diamond.  It is currently in a temporary setting, below.  I think that I prefer the classic setting - it will be returned to the classic setting soon, I believe.  Legend has it that the Hope Diamond is cursed.  We had the great privilege of being escorted around this museum by friends of ours, Russ, Cathy, Reid and Paige.  Reid, who is 17, is an incredibly clever cracker, and spends his summers interning at the Museum of Natural History - his special interest is birds.  

Reid had some insights into the Museum - would you believe that the Hope Diamond does NOT remain in its high-security glass case overnight?  They actually transport it to and from a vault each morning and evening.  It seems crazy to me - I feel like it is more dangerous to move it twice a day than to keep it in the one secure place.  But, it is true, I am not a security expert, so I'm sure they have their reasons.

The foyer of the Museum contains a simply enormous elephant.  No kidding, I nearly fell over backwards when I saw it.  I had no idea that elephants (or Hephalumps as i call them, thank you AA Milne) could get so big!  This fella could hide me under his ear for safe keeping.  Behind him, you can see the incredibly beautiful museum building.   The Daddy and I were so impressed by all of the actual museum and gallery buildings in DC - the Natural History Museum and the NGA were two of the most gorgeous spaces we've ever visited.  It is simply marvelous that you can visit these places for free - even a visit just to check out the architecture would be worthwhile.

The beautiful Capitol Building.  A friend of mine, Sarah, had generously arranged for us to have a guided tour of the building, with a friend of hers who works as a guide.  Sadly, because our trip got cut short, we were not able to.  Next time!

We went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  I must admit, I am not really 'into' planes and rockets, so I sat and played with Tabitha (that is, chased her around for an hour while she tried desperately to crawl and 'walk' all over the building).  The Daddy took dozens of photographs.  I'm not really sure what is what, but I've included a few.

Here is a rocket-type object:

Here are some more large metal rocket thingies:

I believe this is the 'Moon Lander' or the 'Lunar Lander' or something:

This I know - this is the original Wright Brothers airplane!

From the Air and Space, we went to the Smithsonian Museum of American History, which is my favourite.  On display are dresses and accessories from each of the First Ladies.  Even if they didn't belong to First Ladies, the collection is a fascinating piece of fashion history.  Did you know that many of the First Ladies were not, in fact, wives of the Presidents?  There were many daughters and nieces, and other close women.

Here is one of Jackie Kennedy's gowns.  It is beaded yellow silk, with a fine organza overlay covering the beading, then belted with a yellow satin sash.

In contrast, here is one of Martha Washington's dresses.  She was such a tiny thing!

And in contrast, yet again, a flapper-style first lady number.  This would not look out of place on a couture catwalk today:

Look at the pleating and work in this dress.  I spent ages admiring it - so many tiny tucks, beading, pleating, lacework, steel structure and draping:

Here is an interesting comparison, between the 50s and the 60s, and the radical changes which took place.  On the left is a (beautiful) classic 50s gown belonging to Mamie Eisenhower.  It is full-skirted, tight-waisted, low-cut through the bust, and incredibly feminine:  pale pink, covered in sparky beads and crystals, with tulle draping around the bust.  Next to it, from just a few years later, stands one of Jacqueline Kennedy's gowns.  A classic 60s number - a straight column skirt, high, square neckline, some geometric details, and a very contemporary top - chiffon loosely draped over the entire torso, creating a shape which is the antithesis of the 50s corseted gowns.  Both dresses feature silk satin, sparkly beading and sheer tulle/chiffon draping, and both are in pastel colours, yet they are so different:

Pat Nixon's gown, below, was deliciously glitzy, and has aged well - this one would look right at home on a red carpet today:

Here is Michelle Obama's dress from the inauguration.   It is far more interesting and detailed in real life than I remember it being.  One of the fun parts of this display is seeing what size each of the First Ladies were.  Some were short and wide, very grandmotherly.  Others were so tiny, with such diminutive waists, that you could hardly imagine them standing up.  Michelle Obama is just so, so large!  Not fat (of course!) but her torso, waist and height are incredible.  She must be a very imposing woman in real life.

Her shoes were lovely - again, so big!

And here is the jewellery she wore on the night:

At the American History Museum, the original Julia Child kitchen is on display - the actual kitchen from her home, which also served as a television set for many years.  I turned green with envy while looking at her collection of copper and cast iron moulds and pans:

Julia Child was a great collector of 'kitchen accessories'.  One can imagine the state of her 'second drawer':

Look at this doll house.  I would kill to spend an afternoon playing with it!  I'm sure Tabitha would have been highly impressed, were she a few years older.

The original 'Ruby Slippers' from the Wizard of Oz.  I commented that they are not nearly as shiny as I remember them being - to which Paige (aged 14, and another clever cracker like her brother) replied, "well, I imagine the sequins would have degraded a fair bit over the years".  Oh.  Yes.

On the left, you can see the 'original' Muppets, including a very rudimentary Kermit.  On the right is a more recent incarnation of America's Favourite Frog.

Michael Jackson's hat:

Another famous hat - President Lincoln's!

Here is Paige cuddling Tabitha.  Isn't she gorgeous?!  The Daddy and I were so thrilled to spend our time in DC with this incredibly generous, clever and hilarious family.  It made our trip ten times more fun, and by the time we left, we were scheming with Cathy and Paige, planning our next US trip, involving flying into DC, spending more time looking at the museums, then driving down through the South (Cathy is from Alabama), looking at the plantation mansions in Savannah, eating barbecue and soaking up the Southern lifestyle.  Hopefully soon!  In the meantime, we just need to convince them to come visit us in Australia...

PS.  Sadly, I did not take my camera (it was the last day, and it was already packed!) but on the last day, Russ and Cathy took us to brunch at the most fascinating hotel in the world!  The Mansion on O Street.  I could not hope to communicate to you how awesome it is - think secret passageways, hidden tunnels, signed photos and guitars from the Beatles and other rock royalty, hundreds and hundreds of items of memorabilia throughout the rooms, and everything in the building (down to the sinks, ashtrays and sweaters in the closets) is for sale.   Apparently, it's not that well known in DC - if you are ever in the area, book yourself in for breakfast or brunch, after which you are free to explore the entire building at your leisure.