Category: Soups

Beef Stew

One time I asked my mother what her favorite food was.  She thought about my question for a few seconds and then said, “I like anything that I don’t have to cook.”

By the time I asked her that question, my mother had been cooking for her family over sixty years.  Even if we subtract all the Friday Fish Fries, Sunday Buffets and lunches with friends that she had enjoyed over those six decades, I’m sure that she had still cooked at least 60,000 meals.  My mother was fifteen years old when her mother was  diagnosed with tuberculosis and admitted to the TB sanitarium in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Mom’s two older sisters were married and no longer living at home, so she became the housekeeper and cook for her father and two older brothers with the extra responsibility of mothering a younger brother and little sister.  When her mother came home cured from the sanitarium, she was still weak, so Mom kept cooking.  Then she married my father and soon was cooking for her own offspring.

For over sixty years, seven days a week and three times a day, she worked in her kitchen.  She baked bread, cakes, pies, cookies and other desserts; she fried bacon, eggs, sausage and pancakes for breakfast; she roasted hams, chickens, turkeys and pork shoulders; she baked beans, squash, meatloaf, casseroles and puddings; and she made soups and stews almost every week in the year.

Since we grew many of our own vegetables or bought them cheaply from local farmers, soups and stews were a good way to satisfy big appetites without spending a fortune.  And of course, even tough cuts of meat become tender if you simmer them long enough.  Many of Mom’s stews included diced rutabaga, a vegetable which is no longer as popular as it once was.  Rutabaga adds a subtle sweetness to a stew that turns an ordinary dish into something really special.

Be sure to use it in the recipe which follows.  Even if you think you don’t like rutabaga, give it a chance.  This stew has made converts of many who knew they hated the root.

INGREDIENTS:

2 – 2 1/2  lbs. inexpensive cut of beef (chuck roast or similar)

1 large yellow onion 

1 clove garlic

2 to 3 cups of tomato juice

2 to 3 cups of dry red wine 

1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. sugar

2 T butter

2 T cooking oil

1/2 tsp. basil

1 bay leaf

Pinch of cloves

Pinch of cinnamon

1/8 tsp. cayenne

1/8 tsp. marjoram

3 or 4 medium carrots

3 or 4 ribs of celery

2 or 3 medium potatoes

1 small rutabaga (3 to 4 inch diameter)

2 T flour whisked into a half cup of water

1 small can of sliced mushrooms (optional)

PROCEDURE:

Cut the meat into about one-inch cubes discarding bones and excessive fat.   Heat the butter and oil in a Dutch oven or other large pot holding at least 8 quarts.  Brown the meat in batches and set the cubes aside to drain on a paper towel.  While the meat is browning, remove the papery outer layer from the onion and garlic clove, chop the onion into half inch pieces and mince the garlic.

When all the meat has been browned, turn down the heat and add the onions to the pot.  Cook slowly without browning for three or four minutes until the onions are translucent.  Add the garlic and return the meat to the pot.  

Add equal amounts of tomato juice and wine to cover the meat, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about an hour stirring once or twice.  Add all the herbs and spices at this time with more liquid if necessary, and let the pot simmer another hour.  

While the meat is cooking, clean and chop the carrots into 1/4 inch slices.  Clean and chop the celery into 1/2 inch slices.  Peel and cut the potatoes and rutabaga into 1/2 by 1 inch pieces.  Add the vegetables to the pot with equal amounts of juice and wine to cover them.  

Simmer for thirty-five minutes.  Whisk the flour into a half cup of cold water and stir this mixture into the stew until the broth thickens slightly.  At this time add a small can of sliced mushrooms to the stew or add some fresh braised mushrooms if you wish.

Taste and correct the seasoning if necessary and serve with a glass of the dry wine, plenty of good homemade bread and perhaps a salad on the side.  

NOTES:  Don’t forget the rutabaga!  Mom did not use wine in her stews, but she liked my beef stew.  I do wonder sometimes if maybe that was just because she didn’t have to cook it.

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Some years ago I was surprised to learn that I grew up eating food from a gourmet kitchen.  It was not that my mother was a gourmet cook who carefully undercooked everything from carrots to roast beef.  She believed in cooking things until they were “done,” which meant soft for vegetables and gray for meat.

Nor did she bring plates to the table with a slice of chicken breast in the middle and a few green beans artistically placed on one side and an ear of sweet corn with a pat of butter melting over it on the other.  One of us kids brought in a bowl of green beans from the garden, another carried in a platter heaped with ears of sweet corn picked just before supper and Mom carried in the platter of chicken.

By this time Dad was buttering his bread or stirring milk into his coffee.  The table had been set ahead of time and we filled our plates.  Artistic presentations depended on the individual and the meal.  At Thanksgiving, for instance, I tried to keep the cranberries from turning my mashed potatoes pink.

What made Mom’s kitchen gourmet was the fact that she, like the celebrated chefs we read about today, used “locally sourced, organically grown, seasonal ingredients.”  In fact, hers was probably a hyper-gourmet kitchen:  Her locally sourced vegetables came from our gardens which were fertilized with well-composted cow manure from behind Grandpa’s barn.  The chicken had been working as a pest control agent in the garden the day before.

And of course all the fresh vegetables were seasonal.   Dad would check the winter onions daily once the snow was gone from the garden, and soon we would be enjoying fresh green onions.  Three or four weeks later, red and white radishes and leaf lettuce would put in an appearance followed by green peas, beans and little red new potatoes.  By this time the garden would be in or near full production with early cucumbers, carrots, beets, sweet corn and whatever else Mom or Dad had tried that year.

For desserts we had strawberries from Mom’s patch and blueberries and blackberries from the woods around the house picked by eager hands the first time and by sometimes less enthusiastic children on later occasions.

By which circuitous route I come to broccoli.  I don’t remember if we ever grew broccoli.  But if we did and if Mom did not make broccoli cheese soup, I would have tried making it myself.  Enjoying a steaming bowl of fresh broccoli cheese soup on a cool September evening in northern Wisconsin means you probably won’t be using locally-sourced broccoli, but the cheese and half and half can be local, and the result will be delicious and almost a gourmet dish.

Here’s what to do.

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups broccoli florets
2 c. water
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1 small onion (2 to 2 1/2 inch diameter)
4 T butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups Half and Half
A pinch or two of nutmeg
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. hot sauce
1 1/2 cups grated Sharp or Extra Sharp Cheddar cheese
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

PROCEDURE:

Wash the broccoli, cut off and discard the tough lower stems and separate the florets into smaller pieces (up to 1 inch).  Dice the tender upper stems.  Put the broccoli, water and bouillon cubes into a heavy three or four quart saucepan, cover and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer for five minutes.  Remove from the heat.

While the broccoli is cooking, peel and chop the onion finely.  Melt the butter in a heavy four or five quart pot over medium heat, then add the onions.  Cook the onions for about four minutes, then stir the flour into the onions.  Stirring frequently, cook the onions and flour for another three or four minutes over low to medium heat.  Be careful not to brown the onions or flour.

In a free moment, grate about six ounces of the cheese.

Warm the half and half until it starts to steam.  Pour the half and half over the onions and stir to mix well.  Empty the pan of broccoli and bouillon into half and half mixture.  Add the nutmeg, white pepper, garlic powder and hot sauce and stir well. Stir in the cheese, cover and simmer or two or three minutes.

Taste and grind in a little black pepper if the soup needs more “bite”.  Otherwise, just pass the pepper grinder at the table.  You may want to add a little salt as well.

Serve with a salad and fresh bread.  This soup makes a great lunch and we enjoy it for Sunday supper.

NOTE:  Feel free to adjust the amount of cheese you stir into the soup to produce the color and flavor you prefer.