Can this food be saved?: 11th hour stew
On a cool-ish day like today, when three-quarters of our household has been felled by a rotten cold, it seemed like a good time to make something warm and comforting to eat for supper. Somehow a salad just doesn’t seem that appealing when you’re nursing sore throats! (Cold cucumber slices might be the exception.)
My crisper drawers are filled to bursting with vegetables at the moment, some of which have been there for quite some time. Normally I am much better about keeping track of what’s in there and not buying anything unnecessary, but a combination of events have left me with me with double quantities of rather aged vegetables: first, I was away for a couple days last week, and then my neighbour left for 2 weeks, generously gifting me with the perishable contents of her fridge. We’ve been harvesting daily from two garden plots, and yet I was still unable to resist buying not just one, but TWO bags of new baby carrots* the other day, despite already having a nearly full bag of old crop carrots languishing in the fridge. This plethora of carrots had further managed to hide a truly elderly bag of celery from sight, and I also had a bag of beet stems which I had somehow not yet found a use for, despite pulling them out to look at them every day for two weeks.
To make things short, I had a lot of veggies that wouldn`t even win second prize in a beauty contest, and they weren’t about to get any prettier. But as any restaurant chef (or your grandmother) knows, after you clean out the fridge, it’s time to put soup and stew on the menu–slow-cooking brings new life to sad sack vegetables. There’s no need to be scared of them and you don’t have to throw them out just because they’re not at their peak anymore. After all, you wouldn’t chuck away an entire apple just because it has a little bruise–you just cut around the bad spot and eat the rest, right?
I gave my last-ditch stew some extra summery zing with fresh green beans from the garden and lovely earthy new potatoes. And I have to say that it was absolutely delicious. Now, I just need to tackle that 20lb case of ripe peaches and that huge bag of rhubarb…**
11th Hour Stew (aka It`s Now or Never)
- 1.5 pound package of stewing beef (Benlock Farms, via the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market)
- 2 small-ish onions (old crop, so one was going a little dodgy on the outside–just peel off the offending layer/s), chopped
- 4 carrots (which needed a good shave to get rid of those white hairs, frankly), sliced into rounds
- 3 stalks of celery (what I could safely rescue from that limp old bag), chopped
- a big fistful of beet stems (well-picked over to get rid of the dodgy ones), chopped
- one clove of garlic lurking in the butter compartment, chopped
- a half-bag of last year’s frozen fresh tomatoes (about 2 cups) which I had discovered in the freezer and which was starting to form ice crystals since I robbed half of it for something else last month
- half a dozen mushrooms (the last of a bag), chopped
- a nice big handful of green beans, broken into bite-sized pieces
- 6 small/medium new potatoes, quartered
- a bottle of Paddock Wood Vienna Red beer (any beer will do, as light or dark according to your taste)–or use water or vegetable/beef stock
Brown the beef in a bit of oil in your big stewing pot, throwing in the onions and garlic partway through. Then add all the vegetables (apart from the beans and potatoes), the frozen tomatoes, and the beer. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and slowly simmer for an hour and a half, adding water if need be. Twenty minutes or so before you’re ready to eat, add the potatoes. When the potatoes are tender, throw in the green beans for five minutes or so while you’re setting the table. They should still have some bite; don’t cook them to within an inch of their life.
Serves 4 with bread, butter, and dill pickles–you’ll have leftovers for 2 that you could serve over egg noodles–go grab some at the farmers’ market!
* Sovereign Colony’s new crop of carrots are now available at the 8th St Sobeys! These are the most delicious carrots you can buy at a big chain grocery store, and they`re grown just down the road in Rosetown. Keep an eye out for their potatoes, which should be arriving at Sobeys soon too.
** Tomorrow! I`ll do it all tomorrow! August`s bounty has a habit of turning me into Scarlett O`Hara.
