Beef Stew Technique

 

Low and slow is one of the buzz words in modern cooking. Aga mastered / created this technique around 1922. Good to be ahead of the curve, way ahead.  This is a pretty simple, straight ahead recipe with plenty of room to experiment. 

Look for thick chuck roast in your meat department and cube them up yourself. The chuck, cut from the shoulder, has a variety of different muscles running thru it. This will make for an interesting blend of textures and flavors. Remove any visible fat and try to separate along any natural seams.

When you marinate the beef look for a light fruity young wine. The acids in the wine will help break down fatty tissues and penetrate the protein.

Use whatever root vegetables you have on hand. Cut them large enough so you can remove them from the marinade and uniform so they cook together. I like carrots, turnips, celery and onions. Parsnips and fennel also play well together.

Basic Beef Stew Technique

• 3 lbs stewing beef in 1 inch cubes
• 1 bottle young red wine
• 4 cups assorted root vegetables cut in uniform shapes
• 2 garlic cloves, fresh herbs, juniper berries and bay leaf
• 1/2 cup crushed tomatoes or good tomato sauce

Marinate the beef overnite with all the ingredients except the tomato product.

Put your large sauté pan for browning the beef in the Roasting Oven to preheat while you accomplish these other tasks.

Drain marinade and reserve. 

Reduce marinade by 75%. I do this by bringing it to a boil in flat bottomed pan and into the Roasting Oven on the floor. It should be reduced by the time you finish the other tasks.

Separate the vegetables from the beef and reserve. Dry off beef.

Brown the beef in a large skillet (nicely preheated) on the Boil Plate. Add a pinch of salt. Do this in batches to avoid over crowding. Overcrowding will cause the pan to cool down and the meat to give up too much liquid that cannot be evaporated immediately. This will cause the meat to simmer, not brown. Overcrowding a pan is bad technique.  Put the browned beef in your favorite casserole dish with a nice fitting lid. Mine is a big bad Le Creuset. I bought it instead of going on vacation one year. Another Drunk & Disorderly charge at Disney World or a shiny new red Le Creuset? I chose wisely.

Deglaze the pan with the marinade reduction. Add this to the beef. Did I forget to tell you to strain the reduction? Well you should.

Add the tomato product. Bring all of this to a simmer on the Boiling Plate. Into the Simmer Oven for 2 hours. Check after two hours. It should still need some time

Sauté the reserved vegetables. After the first two hoursof cooking add them to the beef. Back in the Simmer Oven for another hour or so.

Remove from oven and check for doneness and seasoning. You can finish your dish with basil & marjoram or other herb combos. Maybe some red pepper flakes for a spot of heat. Go Hungarian on it and add sour cream. From here it's your call.

Thanks for reading to the bottom, enjoy! There's a little bonus info below the picture for being such a deligent reader!

This is my pan after I browned three batches of beef for my stew. The residue sticking to the pan is called the "fond" as in foundation. I pour my marinade into this pan and use the liquid to loosen all those bits of flavors and have added another layer of flavor. Now your cooking with gas!

Boiled Chicken

I know, I know, boiled chicken! I must be a brave cook to take on such a challenging topic. Get a pot, drop in a dirty bird (that's what my grandmother called chickens) and boil until done. Pretty easy.

Maybe we can introduce a little more flavor. Maybe we can involve the Aga while others are content to have the simmering kettle in plain sight. Maybe with proper technique we can transform the mundane into the sublime. Holy cow! Those are some lofty prose. Hope I can back them up.

 

Let's see how it all went down in the Aga Kitchen. Start with the best chicken you can afford. I'm a big fan of a brand called Smart Chicken. Air cooled instead of plunged in a shared water bath.

Boiled Chicken

Here's a shopping list.

• 1 whole quality chicken, resist the urge to buy one cut up for you
• 1/4 of a turnip,  you should always have a turnip in the fridge anyways, peeled and cubed
• 4 celery stalks
• 1 leek split and cleaned
• 3carrot
• 1 onion
• Simon & Garfunkel herb collection, parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme. See if they come bundled as a poultry blend in the produce section,\
• 4 peppercorns & 2 bay leaf
• sea salt

Now lets cut up the chicken. First thing, rinse it off and pat it dry.

 Using a serrated knife and a sawing motion split the breast. Next cut out the back bone by sawing one side then the other. My wife said the picture wasn't very appetizing so sorry no pics of the back bone

Split the leg  from the breast following the natural seam. Flip the leg over and look for a line of fat where the drumstick meets the thigh. Seperate the leg at the fat line. 

 

Split the breast into two pieces of roughly equal size. And there you have it, a chicken cut into eight even pieces. This will help all them cook at equal times.

Let's Boil that Chicken

• Start with a large pot, I used an 8 qt stainless stock pot with a lid
• Add the chicken
•  Cover the chicken with enough cold water so it's 3 inches over the chicken 
• Bring it to a boil, bang the side of the pot occasionally and stir the contents a little. This will allow the impurities to rise up and float on the surface. As they collect on the surface we skim them away. It's Ok if you take a little water away with the scum. It hasn't simmered long enough to hold any flavor.
• After you have skimmed the stock add the veggies, herbs and spices. Don't forget the salt. I used about 1/2 a teaspoon.
• Let this simmer for 30 minutes. When you simmer some bubbles should be breaking the surface on a constant basis. Not rolling bubbles on the entire surface. Aga Tip: Put the stock pot with it's lid on in the Simmer Oven for 45 minutes.
• Remove chicken and strain the rich chicken broth
• Remove the chicken meat  once it's cool enough to handle. Discard any bones and skin.

Now What

 Here is where the fun starts. With the broth you can make soups & stews, the meat can be used for salads, Chinese food, burrito, chicken pot pie (that's what I did) chili etc...

I'll post the pot pie recipe in a few, it was way good.

Cook like you mean it, G

Maine Shrimp Salad for Valentine's Day

There are not really too many finites in cooking. I think that's one of the things that keeps me interested. Hard to believe, but I like being wrong. It means I learned something. I think a therapist would call it "growth". Here is a finite I can sink my teeth into. Write it down and commit to memory. Never cook a special meal that is so laden with fat and calories that you and your mate are too stuffed to "get busy". Makes the dinner date not so special anymore. "We ate and drank so much the only reason we unbuttoned our pants was to keep them from splitting apart" sounds more like something to forget.

Back to the shrimp. Love it when the fresh Maine shrimp come into season. I picked up some at my not so local (50 minutes away) fancy food store. Cucumbers and shellfish always taste good together. The textures play well off each other and respond similarly to seasoning. Both ingredients are delicate and can be overpowered by assertive type of seasonings like raw onion or garlic.

Let's see how this went down in the Agakitchen.

Cook the shrimp

• 3/4 lb of fresh Maine shrimp. Drop into simmering salted water for 90 seconds. Overcooking makes the shrimp mushy. No wine or lemon, the acid has a tendency to denature these small crustaceans. Drain and layout on a flat plate to cool. No need to rinse them under cold water. On a plate and in the fridge. Takes about 30 minutes to cool.

Make the dressing   mix everything together in bowl big enough to add the shrimp and a cucumber

• 3 Tablespoons of mayo. Homemade is really much better and crazy easy. I'll give you a recipe at the end of the post.
• 3 teaspoons of Heinz Chili Sauce. This not some Asian offshoot of Americas best loved condiment. It's ketchup for big boys, a little less sweet with a little more kick. Beats ketchup anyday.
• 1 teaspoon dry sherry
• 1 teaspoon of prepared horseradish. Be sure to squeeze the liquid out of it first.
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika, picks up the smoky notes in the sherry

Put it all together

• peel and quarter your cucumber, remove seeds with your knife tip, dice into medium size uniform pieces. About the same size as the shrimp. Salt the cukes
• toss cukes and shrimp in bowl with dressing, add a little chopped dill or parsley if you have some
• place some fancy greens (I use the herb blend in the winter) tossed with a little oil and vinegar on the plate
• mound the shrimp salad in the center
• D-U-N spells done, rhymes with fun!

As promised, mayonnaise

• 1 egg and 1 egg yolk
• 1T mustard
• 1T cider vinegar
• squeeze from 1/4 of a lemon
• 1 cup olive oil, not EVOO
• salt to taste
• pepper, white if you have it, again to taste
• 1 Tablespoon of hot hot water

Mix everything but the oil and water in a food processor. With the motor running slowly add the oil. After the oil add the hot water. Taste, season and taste again.