Slow Cooker Classic Beef Stew

Recipe courtesy of Real Simple

Link to recipe: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/slow-cooker-recipe-classic-beef-stew-10000000614077/index.html

While I realize this comment may make me sound like a 50s housewife, I adore our "slow cooker". I grew up calling this particular appliance a crock pot, but I think some Don Draper-esque person must have come up with "slow cooker" to make it sound sexier. Regardless, I LOVE my slow cooker. I use the Cusineart, 4-Quart Programmable one. It has several settings, and is incredibly easy to use. It even comes with a rack in the event you want to do things like cook whole chickens in there.

This recipe (which I halved) is slightly adapted from the original available via the link above. It requires a bit of effort up front (leave yourself about 30-45 minutes for steps 1-4), but the payoff in flavor is well worth it. In general, I find many of Real Simple's recipes great with a little tinkering, and I love that they are so generous about posting recipes online. Unfortunately I was so hungry when we ate this that I forgot to photograph it! Argh! I will get better at that.

Recipe:

Slightly over one pound of beef stew meat (note: Trader Joe's sells a fabulous natural, free-range, no antibiotics, prepackaged, diced one that is just the right weight)

1/2 cup all-purpose flour, seasoned with salt and pepper

Olive oil (enough to prevent the meat from sticking during browning)

1 large yellow or white onion, sliced into half-moons

1/2 cup dry red wine 

1 cup beef broth

3 ounces tomato paste (half of one of the small cans)

2 medium potatoes sliced into 1 inch cubes (Yukon Gold work particularly well)

1 cup baby carrots (about a handful)

1 cup mushrooms (baby portabella work well, but you could also do cremini, or even button mushrooms)

1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed

~ 1 1/2 tablespoons each of fresh rosemary and thyme

1 bay leaf

1 tablespoon of kosher salt
1 pinch of sugar

1. Pat the beef dry and coat it in the mixture of flour, salt and pepper. Make sure to shake off the excess flour. Heat olive oil in the bottom of a large skillet over medium-high heat, and brown the meat in batches, being sure to avoid overcrowding the pan. Overcrowding will lower the temperature of your oil too much and you won't get the nice caramelization on the edges of the meat you are looking for. Don't touch the meat while it is browning... let it do its thing! Two minutes per side should be about right. Transfer the meat to the slow-cooker.

2. Add the onions to the pan, adding more olive oil if necessary. Cook until tender, about 10 minutes. After about five minutes, add the chopped rosemary and thyme to the pan. Once the onions are tender, add the tomato paste to coat the onions. Transfer those to the slow cooker. 

3. Deglaze the pan with the wine. You should have lots of brown bits to scrape up! Color  = flavor, so do this thoroughly. Add the glorious flavor conconction to the slow cooker.

4. Next, add the veggies (except the peas - those will go in at the end), salt, a pinch of sugar, and the bay leaf to the slow cooker. You may want to halve the salt (depending on your personal preference and your use of salted or low sodium beef broth). You can always add more later, like when you add the peas in step 6. 

5. Cook on low heat for 7.5 hours, or high heat for 4 hours.

6. Add the peas about 20 minutes before you want to eat to allow them to heat through.

7. Serve with hunks of crusty bread and some of that red wine. 

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Tosca, Hingham, Massachusetts

Tosca may be the very restaurant that made me feel ok about living in the suburbs. I spent several years living in Philadelphia (which I consider food paradise -- more on that later). Moving back to Boston was a bit of an adjustment dining-wise, and then moving to the suburbs an adjustment on top of that! I first went to Tosca in September to celebrate my dad's birthday and recently went back with my husband for Valentine's Day. We are trying to eat out less since buying a house that needs some "updating" (read: looks like the set of That 70's Show), but since it is a social custom to eat out with your loved one on February 14th, we took the bait.

I adore the main dining room at Tosca. The exposed brick and wooden beams are reminiscent of a New England farmhouse... the upscale kind (think Ina Garten's barn). Depending on your seat, you may be able to gaze out the window and watch the passersby, or you may be able to watch the kitchen team hard at work. The staff manage to look hard at work in the most elegant way. Not at all like what I look like in the kitchen. Unfortunately, we were not seated in the main dining room, but the "Salon", which is one of the function spaces. As we entered the room, it became clear to me why I was able to get a reservation one week before Valentine's Day at Tosca. The Salon is a lovely space for say, a bridal shower, but I felt really isolated from the buzz of the main dining room, and it lacked any romance or pizazz.

While I fully realize that blog posts with pictures of food are way sexier than those without, photographing your food at a restaurant is apparently not always welcomed now that everyone on the internet has a food blog (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/dining/restaurants-turn-camera-shy.html?_r=0 ), so I abstained. I will include pictures of food I prepare at home, promise.

We started with the Crispy Point Judith Calamari and a Caesar salad. The calamari were gently fried, tender morsels of goodness that were beautifully complemented by the accompanying arugula and house pickled peppers. I hate mayonnaise, so I skipped the basil aioli, but it looked lovely for those of you who are into that kind of thing. At my husband's request, we had the anchovies served on the side of the Caesar. The dressing can make or break this dish, and this dressing was spot on, creamy and piquant with hints of lemon and sharp cheese (I know this flies in the face of my prior comment about mayonnaise... I'm a bit of a food hypocrite sometimes). I mostly enjoyed the Rosemary Pappardelle with duck ragu for my entree. The sweetness of the sherry based sauce could have been better balanced with some salt, perhaps from a grating of Parmesan. The pappardelle noodles were also a touch thick and borderline gummy in places. I wanted the S'Mores fondue for dessert, but to avoid total gluttony, we opted for a special "tasting" sampler that included a flourless red velvet cake with white chocolate gelato, some spicy sticky toffee pudding, and a third item that obviously failed to impress me as I cannot remember what it was. The highlight was definitely the gelato.

All in all, I would give our most recent experience a solid B+. (As an aside, my husband loved his meal, the Pork Costoletta -- I can't say much because I only had a bite, but that bite was delicious.) Tosca is not an inexpensive night out, but it's a great place to take your city friends if you are sneakily trying to convince them that they too should move to the suburbs so you can drink wine together every weekend.

Going places and eating things

The phrase, "going places and eating things" was coined by my parents to describe one of our favorite weekend activities, and I have them to thank for my love of food. It was a good Saturday when we got in the car early in the morning and returned home MANY hours later, after much driving from place to place, scoping out the newest (in some cases only new to us) bakeries, diners, restaurants and cafes. In the early days, my "going places and eating things" activities were limited to Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, but now that I'm all grown up, I've expanded! (And while I "go places and eat thing" with a lot of people now, I still love doing it with my parents, perhaps most of all.)

I decided to start this blog because I (like a lot of people) sometimes have fantasies of becoming a food writer. Even if that never happens, it will always be true that I love spending my free time thinking about, creating, and eating great food.

To me, being a foodie is about enjoying life through food (and wine, beer, St. Germain cocktails... insert your beverage of choice). Sometimes it's fancy, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you know every wine on the list, and sometimes you don't know any. Sometimes you're with others, and sometimes you're enjoying a rare moment of solitude. Sometimes going places and eating things is at a restaurant, but sometimes its at home. What matters is the process of creating, savoring, and experiencing life meal by meal.

This is a place for me to share my experiences living life through food... and to hopefully learn a little bit about how others do the same.