Quote from the chef! He was certainly feeling proud of himself last night, because it definitely was a good stew. Sunday, 1st of May in Melbourne was a chilly one after the truly beautiful autumn week we had. The skies clouded over and threatened to rain for most of the afternoon, until the heavens finally made that commitment and opened. We had done our groceries by this stage, and a stew was already on the cards accompanied by DVDs and a warm blankie.
And so chef Marty decided it would a teaching kitchen, and armed with a glass of red, I attempted to take notes. This is the reason for the hasty blog, as I am more than likely to forget the pearls of wisdom if they are not recorded quick smart.
"The secret to a great stew - is about sealing the meat and getting the flavour right up front"- Martin Haines.
There are a number of vessels for this stew - a slow cooker for those who want to put it on in the morning before work, a casserole pot that can go on the stove top to be slowly cooked, or the easiest and most popular - a good casserole pot that you can seal off everything in,and pop in the oven for a couple of hours on a lower heat. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it but our favourite kitchen item is definitely our amazing Le Creuset casserole pot. There is nothing quite like it for quality and value. A lifetime guarantee on the cast iron pot, and the ability to use it for just about anything. My mom certainly had a casserole pot that was used for so many dishes, that I made sure I had one of my own!
Right, let's make a stew! Firstly, you want to chop up your carrots, celery, leek, mushrooms and onion. A lug of olive oil into the pot and heat that up to a medium heat, and your garlic cloves (whole, peeled, slightly squished) and thyme can be added to that. Then add that chopped up veg and saute that off. So that means you want to cook it off lightly and get a little bit of colour going and those veg slightly softened.
Once that's been done, remove from the pot and pop aside. Now here's where things are different from what I've always known, and if you do your meat first, I recommend you try it this way and see the amazing difference if flavour - if you do - and if you don't let me know!
Once that veg has been removed, a little more olive oil in the pot and you want to add the meat. We used beef osso bucco, but gravy beef, blade steak, any cheaper cut of meat is great. This is a cost-effective dinner and because of the slow-cooking, you don't need expensive meat, it's actually better with cheaper cuts! And the secret he was talking about is now - seal that meat off with some seasoning. And not just a light colouring. You really want to get that meat cooked and coloured. It was easily a good 5 minutes of cooking. Once that meat is sealed, add a couple of large pinches of flour, a little salt and then your sauteed veg. And cook these all up together for a little. Using your wooden spoon, scrape the bottom of the pot to get all that flavour mixed through the stew. Add your stock - another good stew secret is decent stock. You can make your own, use it from previous stews that you've frozen, or we use Campbell's Salt Reduced Beef/Chicken/Veg whichever is appropriate. Add enough to cover the base and mix it through, then add some but keep stirring everything together and add a little more to cover. The longer you want to cook it the more stock you need to use because that will cook down and caramelise and flavour everything. We cooked the stew at 160 for a couple of hours so we added 3/4 of a box of Campbell's (1lt).
Preheat the oven to 200, and then put it down to 160 when you're about to put the pot in. Also get the stew bubbling on the stove top before it goes in the oven so that it's cooking away before you pop it in.
And that is that. Serve with some mash potatoes and green beans, or some brown rice - YUM! There is really nothing I love more than winter food and beautiful warming stews! I think I'm about to get another tutorial in making chicken pie tonight, so I'd better fill up that wine glass and get a pencil. There will be more Jamie in the next few weeks - I'm working on persuading chef extraordinaire
into making the duck confit from the French section!
Looking forward to hearing how the stews have gone!
Ciao
xoxo
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