Stave Off Chilly Weather with Beef Stew

One of the original reasons for starting this blog was to save recipes I'd made (and liked) and to have an easy way to look them up. Well, after ten-plus years and nearly 450 recipes later, I've got quite the stash!

Still, sometimes I'll go to search for a particular favorite just to make sure I've got all the ingredients I need for dinner that night and…oops…I'll realize that I never posted it here. So then I go to my old recipe box (left) and hope against hope that at some point in the pre-digital past—you know, like when dinosaurs roamed the earth and people still argued over who was the guy in that movie—I had scribbled it on a 3" by 5" card and filed it under the correct category. Or if that doesn't reveal my prey, then it's searching online to find a recipe that'll approximate what I'm looking for, always a risky proposition.

Luckily, in the case of my favorite beef stew recipe, the card was in the box and was even filed under "Fish and Meats," just behind artichoke chicken casserole and in front of smoked salmon pasta. Originally a women's magazine recipe that my mother tore out of a Better Homes and Gardens circa 1976 (yes, that's noted on the file card, too), I'd copied it down in case I needed a big, meaty, company's-coming dish to haul out for a special occasion.

She'd made it many times for just such eventualities, whether a church supper or to impress a business associate that my father was bringing home, one of those hearty one-dish dinners that would always be a guaranteed rave-inducer. See why I wanted to find it? And now that it's here, I'm hoping you'll find it as satisfying and useful as my mother did, and I always do.

Mom's Beef Stew

4 lbs. chuck roast, cut in 1" pieces
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
3/4 c. flour
1 Tbsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. dried thyme or tarragon
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 1/2 c. carrots, sliced into rounds
2 1/2 c. dry red wine
3 bay leaves
1 tsp. each thyme and basil
3 medium potatoes, sliced into 3/4" or so cubes (other root vegetables work great, too)
Salt to taste

In paper bag or gallon zip-lock plastic bag, place flour, salt, pepper and teaspoon of herbs. Shake to combine.

Heat oil in large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. While oil heats, add beef cubes, eight or so at a time, to the flour mixture in the bag and shake to coat them. When the oil shimmers, add the coated beef cubes to the pot, adding more floured cubes and browning them. Make sure you don't crowd the beef, though, or you'll end up steaming them in juice rather than browning them. As they brown, remove them from the pot to a platter, and add more floured beef cubes to the pot.

When all the beef has been browned and has been removed to the platter, add the onions and garlic to the pot, scraping up the browned bits of flour from the bottom as the vegetables sauté. When they're tender, add the meat back to the pot along with the carrots, wine, bay leaves and herbs. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer for one hour. At that point, if it seems too dry, add another half-cup or so of wine. Add cubed potatoes to the pot and continue simmering for an additional hour or more until the beef is completely tender.

Crustacean Celebration: Crab Bouillabaisse

You can blame climate change for the reason Dungeness crab season was delayed this year. Domoic acid, a dangerous neurotoxin that can cause loss of short-term memory, seizures and sometimes even death, became a problem because of unusually warm ocean temperatures off the West Coast from Alaska to California. These warm waters caused a bloom of an algae called Pseudo-nitzschia, which produces the domoic acid, and while the toxin doesn't affect crabs, clams, anchovies and other fish, it does build up in their bodies when they feed.

It takes crabs a fair amount of time to purge the toxin from their systems once the algae bloom dies off. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife declared Oregon's Dungeness to be safe for consumption as of January 4, 2016, nearly a month later than normal. One of my first responses, naturally, was to go out and buy one for myself. And since I'd been craving a fish stew, I decided to make my first ever bouillabaisse.

Since I'd never made one before, some research was in order. The first resource was my icon of home cook-friendly French cuisine, Ms. Julia Child. One of her recipes calls for making a court bouillon of fish heads, bones and trimmings and adding onions, leeks, tomatoes, herbs and seasonings, which is strained and then used to cook live lobsters—two!—white fish, some shellfish and an eel. Yes, an eel. Well.

I moved on to Jimmy—you may know him as James Beard, but we're very close—who spent a great deal of time with Julia and whose bouillabaisse recipe is a somewhat simplified version of hers.  Though I was impressed with his "soupe de poisson," which calls for taking a couple of pounds of fish (scales, bones and all), cooking it for about half an hour in water, then straining off the "juice"  and adding tomatoes and onions to it. He then throws in some vermicelli, saffron and…this is so Jimmy…Swiss cheese!

A couple of online checks and I had the basic outline of what I was going to do. All it took was a trip to the fish counter at the store, then picking up a couple of things that weren't in my vegetable bin at home, and within an hour of starting the process—thank heavens for having homemade fish stock in my freezer—we were sitting down to steaming bowls of this beautiful fish stew!

Easy Bouillabaisse

1/4 tsp. saffron
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped in 1/2" dice
2 small fennel bulbs or 1 large bulb, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tomatoes, chopped in 1/2" dice
1 c. dry white wine
3 qts. fish stock
2 lbs. white fish (cod, tilapia, halibut, rockfish, etc.), sliced in 1" pieces
1 lb. clams
1/2 lb. mussels
1/2 lb. shrimp
1 Dungeness crab, cooked and meat picked from shell

Put saffron threads in mortar and pestle with salt and grind until the saffron is mostly powdered. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add onion and sauté till translucent. Add fennel and garlic and sauté till tender. Add ground saffron, tomatoes, white wine and stock. Bring to a boil, then immediately reduce to simmer for 20 minutes. Add fish, shellfish and crab. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 10 min.

For even more seriously great crab recipes, from crab cakes to chowders to pasta dishes, check out the Crustacean Celebration chronicles.

Cajun Short Rib & Oxtail Gravy in Louisiana

I love it when my friend Jim Dixon of Real Good Food goes to New Orleans because he not only posts great photos of the food he finds (and eats), but gives us a taste of the cultural flavors of that special place. Here he shares some of New Orleans' food history along with his version of Cajun gravy.

We've been going to Louisiana since one of our kids moved to New Orleans eight years ago, and every time we're there I discover something I want to eat more often. The foodways of the Gulf Coast are simmered in a long history, sometimes dark and mostly forgotten. The contributions of Native Americans, enslaved Africans and displaced Acadians have been stirred together with flavors from the colonial past and perked up with Caribbean spices. In the last century waves of German, Irish, and Italian immigrants added their cooking traditions to the pot, and the food you eat in Louisiana today tastes of all those influences.

And while I love the more sophisticated food of New Orleans, I'm drawn to the cooking of the country. It's more like what I cooked before I ever went to Louisiana, simple and ingredient-driven, the everyday food of working people. But there's a lot of crossover from Creole to Cajun, and done right by good cooks the results are delicious no matter what they're called.

The first time we drove west from New Orleans toward Acadiana, I asked my friend Pableaux, a prairie Cajun from New Iberia, what I should eat if I really wanted to taste Cajun food. "Anything with gravy," he said. In southwestern Louisiana gravy isn't the pale stuff served on biscuits or the light brown sauce you might have with turkey. Cajun gravy is meaty and dark; served on rice, another Louisiana staple, it's a meal.

On this trip, we went to the Blackpot Festival just outside of Lafayette, a weekend celebration of local music and food that includes an amateur cooking competition. The categories were gumbo, jambalaya, cracklings, and gravy, and everything had to be cooked in a cast iron pot. I watched the cooks, asked a lot of questions, and tasted some good food. When I got back, I had to make some gravy.

Short Rib and Oxtail Gravy

Beef is used most often for traditional rice and gravy, but squirrels, quail and other game go in the pot, too. Cuts with a lot of connective tissue, often the cheapest, add collagen for a rich, velvety gravy. My favorite at Blackpot combined short ribs and oxtails, but round steak or stew meat work well, too. Start by browning about a pound of meat in extra virgin olive oil over medium heat in a cast iron pot or other heavy pan, turning often until it's well-browned on all sides. Season liberally with salt, black pepper and either a little cayenne or a Cajun spice blend like Slap Ya Mama or Tony Chachere's. Remove the meat from the pot and add a chopped onion.

Cook the onion until it's very dark, stirring regularly. More than one cook told me this was critical for good gravy. Add a couple of stalks of chopped celery and some chopped green bell pepper (or a jalapeno). Cook for another 10 minutes or so, then add the meat back into the pot, pour in a couple of cups of water (or stock), cover and simmer for a few hours or until the meat is very tender. If you want a thicker gravy, mix a tablespoon of flour with a little cold water to make a paste, then stir it in and cook for another half hour or so. Serve the gravy over Kokuho Rose brown rice with chopped green onions and some Crystal hot sauce.

Winter Warmer: Kimchi Stew

I've said it before, I'll say it again. My neighbors rock. The folks next door are both scientists, love dogs, make great cocktails—the husband gave Dave his recipe for Manhattans, which we've been happily slurping up ever since—and invite us to their yard parties. A couple of doors down are two tremendous cooks who've fed us lovely dinners and even let us make bread in their oven when ours was on the fritz.

The house behind us was formerly occupied by a grumpy gus who never cottoned to the young hippies (us) who moved in, started cutting down the laurel bushes that nearly engulfed the house and taking down the cyclone fencing. A few years ago he sold his house to a young couple who, within a week of moving in, planted a 100-foot-long garden along the south-facing street side and announced we could help ourselves to the bounty.

This was promising enough, but when we found out that the husband was into beer and the wife was a culinary instructor, the future was sealed and we've been passing bacon, pizza and cocktails back and forth over the back fence ever since. (Which never fails to impress friends who come over.)

Susana eventually opened her own cooking school with her best friend and fellow instructor Melinda, who felicitously happens to be a master butcher (yes, this is a fairy-tale relationship). Ever the good neighbor, Susana called the other afternoon asking if I'd be interested in a batch of stew left over from a Korean cooking class that her students couldn't finish because they were too full from the other dishes they'd made.

I've had enough of her cooking to know a terrific dinner had just fallen into my lap, and ran over immediately to pick it up. The base of the stew was a delicious fresh kimchi they'd made in class, augmented by a combination of tofu and some pork belly from a pig Melinda had butchered for a class the day before. I extracted a promise that she'd share the recipe before dashing back home to warm it up for dinner.

Exquisitely flavored and needing nothing more than some fluffy rice to make a company-worthy feast, this dish is destined become a regular addition to our dinner repertoire. I can't wait to start trying it with some of the terrific locally made kimchis available in town (Choi's, I'm thinking of you!), and it's giving me a very good reason to attempt making some of my own in the near future.

Susana's Kimchi Stew

1 lb. pork belly, in 1/4" dice
1/2 onion, diced
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 qt. cabbage kimchi
2 qts. chicken stock
1 block firm tofu, medium dice
Salt, pepper, fish sauce to taste

Brown the pork belly and then add the onions to brown, then add garlic. When garlic is slightly browned, add in kimchi and stock and let simmer on low for about 30 minutes. Add in tofu and let simmer for a final 5-7 minutes to warm tofu through and season to taste with salt, pepper and fish sauce.

The "L" Word: Leftover Turkey in Posole

The first words out of Dave's mouth when I mention ordering the holiday turkey are, "Oboy! Turkey enchiladas!" That's because after we've reprised the meal the next day to use up the leftover gravy and mashed potatoes, as well as a couple of turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce, there always seems to be enough for a batch of enchiladas.

I normally use my basic chile sauce, but I got to thinking that maybe a posole rojo would be a nice change, since I've always liked the way that chiles tend to mitigate the sometimes overbearing flavor that turkey can have. Plus the smokiness from the turkey meat (thanks to Dave's mad skills with the Weber) and the stock from the carcass would lend a woodsy, hearty flavor to the corn and chiles.

In the past I've made posole as a thick stew, but thanks to the incredible soup my friend Linda Colwell made with her verde version, I decided to try something like it with red chiles. It could also be made with chicken and chicken stock, but the turkey made it so much richer, and was so good we may just have to alternate it with the enchiladas from now on. Is that OK, honey?

Turkey Posole Rojo

12 oz. dried posole or hominy
6-8 dried ancho chiles
1 onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp. oregano
Salt to taste
4 c. leftover turkey, shredded
8 c. turkey or chicken stock
Juice of 1 lime

Put dried posole into non-reactive bowl or Dutch oven and cover with water. Soak overnight. Drain posole and put back in Dutch oven in enough salted water to cover. Bring to boil and simmer for at least 2 hours until softened.

Remove seeds, ribs and stems from chiles and tear into large pieces. Place in heat-proof bowl and cover with boiling water. After half an hour, when chiles are soft and somewhat cooled, drain them, reserving the liquid. Put chiles, onion, oregano and garlic in bowl of food processor and process, adding reserved chile-soaking liquid to make it a thick sauce. Season to taste with salt.

Add meat, chile sauce and stock to cooked hominy in Dutch oven and stir to combine. Bring to a boil on the stove, lower heat and simmer, covered, for one hour. Add water if needed to thin to desired consistency. Stir in lime juice.

Photo of uncooked posole (hominy) from the James Beard Foundation.

Simmering at the Savoy

I'm always reduced to drooling by the weekly newsletters that I get from Jim Dixon of RealGoodFood. A combination of memoir, recipe and the week's offerings of his once-a-week-or-so "pop-up" store at Activspace, he always comes up with something that makes me want to run into the kitchen and start cooking.

For many years my booth at the Portland Farmers Market was next to Fred Carlo’s. I’ve known Fred for a long time, and I didn’t mind the savory aroma of frying onions, peppers and pork that clung to me after the market was over. During the colder months we’d share whatever we’d brought to “sweeten” our coffee, and we’d swap stories about business, Italy and the things we loved to eat.

I don’t remember exactly when Fred told me about one of the dishes his grandmother made, but it’s always been stuck in my head. He described how she’d add Savoy cabbage to a pot of beans, then pour in polenta and let it simmer together to form a thick, chunky stew. It was one of his favorite things. So last week at the market, when I saw the dried borlotti beans at Viridian Farms and the bright green, wrinkled leaves of Savoy cabbage at Spring Hill Farm, I knew it was time to make Fred’s grandmother’s beans.

Borlotti Beans, Savoy Cabbage, Polenta

Borlotti beans are also called cranberry beans, and it’s worth it to seek the best, either from Viridian Farms or Ayers Creek Farm. Bob’s Red Mill sells packaged cranberry beans, and in a pinch you could substitute pintos. Good polenta makes a huge difference, too, and Ayers Creek is the best. If you can’t get to the Hillsdale Farmers Market early on a Sunday when they actually have some, Anson Mills mail order might the next best.

Cook a half pound beans separately using my no-soak oven approach. Combine the beans with about three times as much water, a big pinch of sea salt, and a healthy glug of extra virgin olive oil. Cook in the oven at 250° until tender, usually at least a couple of hours. Add more water if the top of the beans are dry. Do this a day or two ahead and store in the refrigerator.

I decided to cook the polenta separately. Put a cup of polenta into a saucepan, then stir in 3 cups of cold water; add some salt. Heat slowly, stirring occasionally and scraping the bottom of the pan. Cook on very low heat for about 45 minutes, adding a little hot water if it gets too thick (I usually add about a half cup over the last 20 minutes or so).

Dice about a half pound of pancetta (or another fatty cured pork product; bacon, ham, proscuitto) and cook for about 10 minutes in extra virgin. Add a diced onion, cook for about 5 more minutes, and add a couple of diced garlic cloves. Let that cook while you chop half a head of Savoy cabbage (use plain green cabbage if you can’t find Savoy). Toss in the cabbage and cook uncovered for 10 minutes or so, then add the beans and simmer for another 15 minutes.

If you want to cook the polenta with the beans and cabbage, add it to the pot after the cabbage, but use less (maybe half a cup) and make sure there’s enough liquid from the beans (add a little water if necessary). Simmer everything for at least 40 minutes, stirring often.

Spoon the beans and cabbage over the polenta, drizzle with good extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with flor de sal.

Shell Game

My first experience with shell beans was a disaster. I'd seen them in the store packaged in neat little bags labeled "cranberry beans," their irregular lipstick-pink spots dotting a slightly yellowish, waxy surface. I imagined braising them with some onions and garlic, something simple that would allow their flavor and texture to shine.

I brought them home, stuck them in the vegetable bin and, like so many impulsive purchases I've made in the past, promptly forgot about them. When I rediscovered them a month or so later when cleaning out the fridge, they were not a pretty sight, and I have to say that the shame of it put me off of them for some time.

Then the other night I had braised beans with roast chicken at Bar Avignon, and it was so simple and such a terrific combination it made me want to venture into shell bean territory again. I picked up a bag of soldier beans from Anthony and Carol at the Hillsdale farmers' market the next Sunday, bought some sausages at the store and stuck a post-it note to my forehead labeled "BEANS" so I wouldn't forget. (Well, not really, but I did leave them on the counter just to make sure.)

With some of the last tomatoes and a few leaves of kale from the garden, this easy braise took a little over a half hour to cook and was totally company-worthy. Leave out the sausages and it would be a great side or vegetarian main dish if you throw in some oregano or fresh basil leaves to pump up the flavor quotient. The sausages, of course, could be sweet Italian or any type you choose, but I'd say the simpler the better. Though browning them on the stove then letting them cook with the beans, rather than grilling and adding them at the end, let their juices seep into the stew and took it to a whole different level.

Shell Beans with Tomatoes and Sausages

2 lbs. sausages (I used brats)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped fine
4 cloves garlic, chopped fine
4 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
4-5 leaves lacinato or other kale, cut in 1/4" slices
1 lb. shell beans
Salt to taste

Heat cast iron skillet over medium flame until fairly hot. Add sausages (in batches if necessary), allowing the surface to get a nice sear but not cooking them through. Set aside.

In Dutch oven, heat the oil and add onion and garlic and sauté till translucent. Add tomatoes and simmer till they start to break down, then add kale, beans and sausages. Bring back to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about a half hour or until sausages are cooked through and beans are tender but not mushy. Add salt to taste.

Feeling Like Feijoada?

Call it braising, stewing or what-have-you, but long-simmered ingredients are common to most cultures, whether they eat meat or not. I consider thick soups (we call it "stewp") to be in the same category, since they're hearty and comforting and nutritious all at once.

And with the record-setting rainy days we've been having lately…heck, let's just call them downright ugly…having something warming all day on a back burner is just what the doctor ordered. The other evening the prescription was filled by our friends Judy and Tom, who recently moved here from California.

At one time Tom was a guest professor in Brazil, and Judy learned to make several of the local specialties, including a fabulous feijoada, a stew of beans and meat that, depending on where you look, came from Portugal to Brazil with early settlers or originated with African-descended cooks in colonial Brazil. Either way, it has since become the national dish. To make the invitation even more attractive, they let it slip that Tom was making caipirinhas (right) to accompany the meal. Little did they know that just saying "How would you like to come over?" is normally enough for us to jump.

Walking in, we were met by the aroma of meaty goodness wafting toward us, the source being a pot of reddish liquid bubbling away in the kitchen, with large hunks of beef and pork slowly melting into it. Beforehand I'd suggested to Judy that a trip to Gartner's might be in order, and they were astonished that in the (seeming) miles of cases were all the sausages, tongue and pork parts the recipe called for.

That recipe came from a book called Brazilian Cookery by Margarette de Andrade, an American who married a Brazilian journalist and diplomat, then became an expert on the cuisine of her adopted country. As Ms. de Andrade suggested, Judy separated the beans and meat, serving the beans over rice, then passing the meat on a platter. That was then topped with a Brazilian version of pico de gallo (onions, tomatoes, cilatro, olive oil, vinegar and salt) and sprinkled with a granular cassava or manioc flour that helps to sop up some of the fat and juices from the meat. All this and sides of collards sautéed with bacon and orange slices…well, to put it mildly, we were in heaven.

All it takes is a glance at the recipe to appreciate how much time and work went into making this meal the spectacular success it was. For something simply called a "stew," it's no easy feat. Here's to talented friends!

Feijoada No. 1

From "Brazilian Cookery: Traditional and Modern" by Margarette de Andrade

5 c. black beans
1 lb. jerked beef [carne seca in Brazil - optional]
1 small smoked tongue [unsmoked is fine]
1/2 lb. Canadian bacon
1 lb. fresh sausages
1 lb. corned spareribs [plain are fine, too]
1 lb. smoked sausages or Portuguese sausages
2 pig's feet [optional]
1 lb. lean beef, cut in half
1/4 lb. lean bacon
1 Tbsp. shortening [olive oil is fine]
2 lg. chopped onions
3 crushed garlic cloves
1 chopped tomato (optional)
1 Tbsp. chopped parsley (optional)
1 crushed hot pepper (optional)

Pick over beans, wash and soak overnight in cold water. Soak jerked beef, tongue, Canadian bacon overnight in separate pans of cold water. Next morning, drain the beans (if any liquid remains), cover with fresh cold water and cook for about 2 1/2 hours in covered saucepan, adding, as needed, sufficient water to keep the beans covered. When beans are cooked and tender, remove about 1/4 c. of the bean liquor and set aside to cool and to be used for preparing the special hot sauce served with the Feijoada.

Meanwhile, as the beans are cooking, prepare the meats as follows, always removing them from the liquid in which they were cooked: Drain the jerked beef, cover with cold water, bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour, or until fork tender. Remove, cut into 1-inch strips and set aside. Parboil tongue long enough to be able to remove skin, and set aside. Prick fresh sausages, parboil [or brown] and set aside. Parboil Canadian bacon, spareribs, smoked sausages and pig's feet and set aside.

Place all the meats, except the fresh pork sausages but including the beef and bacon, in a very large saucepan, cover with tepid water, slowly bring to a boil and simmer until the meats are tender (about 1 1/2 hours). Drain all the meats and add to the beans with the pork sausages. Simmer until meats are very tender and beans are soft enough to mash easily. Season with salt.

About 1/2 hour before serving melt the shortening in a large skillet and gently sauté the onions and garlic. If the optional ingredients are desired, they also should be sautéed at this time. Add about 2 c. or ladles of the beans and mash with a wooden spoon or mallet. Pour about 2 c. of the bean liquor over the mixture, simmer until mixture thickens, then return to the pot containing beans and meats. Simmer until thoroughly blended, about 1/2 an hour. Taste and correct seasoning.

To serve: Remove the meats from the beans and slice so that each person may have a small portion of the various kinds of meat. According to long-established custom, the tongue is placed in the center of the platter and the smoked meats at one end while the fresh meats are arranged attractively at the other end of the platter. Moisten the meats with a small ladle of the bean liquor.

The beans are served in a soup tureen or deep serving dish. The guest helps himself to an assortment of meats and places a serving of Brazilian Rice [rice with onion and tomato - Judy said most places just use plain rice] to one side of the plate. The beans with their rich sauce are ladled over the rice while manioc meal or Butter Farofa [butter, egg, onion, manioc meal] is sprinkled over the beans or meats. Sliced oranges and Couve à Mineira [kale or collards cooking in bacon fat] accompany the feijoada as well as a special hot sauce, Molho de Pimenta e Limao [pepper and lemon "sauce," a version of the pico de gallo mentioned above], to which some of the bean liquor is added. Brazilian rum [cachaça, more properly a brandy since it is distilled from fermented sugar cane juice rather than the molasses used for rum] is also served with this meal or else a Batida [a mixed cocktail, like the caipirinha mentioned above, made with cachaça].

Winter Warmer

To the tune of Let It Snow, with apologies to Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne:

When the weather outside is frightful,You can make a meal that's delightful.
Just cook something low and slow
And let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

With the accumulated snowage rapidly approaching a crazy foot and a half here in Portland and the relentless drumbeat of Christmas throbbing in my ears, I'm deep in comfort mode. And around here that means chunks of meat and vegetables simmered for hours in stock and wine. So when I saw a recipe for a beef stew with prunes on Mark Bittman's blog, Bitten, I knew it would come in handy this week.

Skijoring in Vermont. My question is: they see a bunny, then what?

His recipe called for chuck which, like pork shoulder, oxtail, ham hocks and other "less-desirable" cuts of meat, can feed a crowd (or be eaten over several days) for not much money without sacrificing on the flavor front. Plus, when the social luster of your family is wearing thin after being house-bound for a week together and you run into your neighbors skijoring through the streets with their dogs, you'll have this in your back pocket to lure them to your dinner table.

Beef Stew With Prunes

3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 lbs. lean boneless beef, preferably chuck, in 2-inch cubes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 onion, peeled and chopped
3 plum tomatoes, stemmed and chopped (canned are fine)
1 tsp. sweet paprika, more to taste
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1 c. chicken stock
1 c. dry red wine
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 c. pitted prunes
1 Tbsp. sherry vinegar or other vinegar, or to taste
Chopped parsley leaves for garnish

Place a deep skillet or casserole that can be covered over medium-high heat, and add oil. Brown meat well on all sides, seasoning with salt and pepper, for 10 minutes; remove with a slotted spoon.

In same pot over medium-high heat, sauté onion and tomatoes with a large pinch of salt and some pepper. When they soften, about 5 minutes, stir in paprika, cinnamon, and bay leaf. Return meat to pan, and add stock and wine; bring to a boil, then lower heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. If mixture starts to dry, add a little water or stock.

Remove cinnamon and bay leaf, and stir in sugar and prunes. Simmer until prunes and meat are soft, another 30 to 45 minutes. (Dish can be made in advance to this point; let sit for a few hours, or cover and refrigerate for up to a day before reheating and proceeding.) When meat is very tender, uncover pot and add vinegar; if necessary, raise heat so sauce thickens and becomes glossy. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve hot, garnished with parsley. Excellent with polenta, couscous or saffron rice.

Heavenly Purgatorio

The weather is finally back to what we expect spring in Oregon to feel like. It's coolish at times, with light, almost mist-like precipitation interspersed with warm, 70-degree days. And these pre-summer temperatures provide an opportunity to get the last of the winter's braising and simmering out of the way before barbecue season hits in earnest.

I was going through the dried goods on the pantry shelf yesterday and ran across a bag of dried purgatorio beans from Anthony and Carol Boutard's Ayers Creek Farm. We also had a few slices of uncooked bacon left from Sunday's breakfast, so it seemed that an Italian bean dish would be in order. Anthony describes the purgatorio as a "very small, thin-skinned white bean originating from Gradoli (Viterbo), Italy," and I can add that its creamy, lush texture and almost sweet flavor is fabulous when combined with smoky bacon and tomato.

Throw in a little arugula from the market and the final batch of pesto from last fall and we called it dinner.

White Bean Stew

For the stew:
4 slices bacon, sliced in 1/4" pieces
1 large onion, chopped fine
4 cloves garlic, crushed with the flat of a knife, skins removed
6-8 c. chicken stock
2 c. small white beans
5 canned roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 Tbsp. dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste

For serving:
1 bunch arugula
Pesto
Parmesan for sprinkling

Fry bacon in large Dutch oven. When rendered of fat, add chopped onion and garlic and sauté till translucent. Add rest of stew ingredients and bring to a strong simmer. Turn down heat and simmer till beans are tender (at least 1 1/2 hrs.). Add stock or water if it seems too dry, but the end result should have a stew-y rather than a soupy quality.

To serve, put a handful of the arugula in the bottom of the bowl. Put a ladle-full of the stew on top, then add a tablespoon or so of pesto. Sprinkle with parmesan and serve with a slice of crusty bread and a glass of red wine alongside.