14 October 2008

Food again

More food posting. Autumn seems to be my best season to cook. Also, while I am trying to finish the doll, it's agonisingly slow. Knit knit knit.

But I did make some pretty decent stew. Someone posted a link to something similar on some forum I read, and I couldn't remember which forum or which recipe site, so I wound up making most of it up. There are quite a few recipes of this sort out on the web, and most of them are kin to the Argentine carbonada criolla, which seems to be one of those national dishes which everyone makes each in her own way.

I had a choice between giant jack o'lantern pumpkins and cute little sugar pie pumpkins, so I went with a smaller one that would fit in my oven. Because the pumpkin was smaller, I scaled back the proportion of vegetables and went with the smaller quantity of beef. I plan to do this again as Samhain dinner and if I can get a medium-sized pumpkin, I will adjust the balance. A chopped tomato or spoonful of tomato paste would be nice. If you like bell peppers -- I don't, but don't let that stop you -- you could chop one of those up into this too. Or, really, whatever other vegetables you like. I saw a lot of versions with corn. You could probably even ditch the beef (and beef stock) for beans (and veg broth) and make this a vegetarian stew, if you're into that sort of thing.

Pumpkin Beef Stew

Pumpkin Beef Stew

1.5 to 2 lbs beef stew meat
2 tbs oil
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 medium white potato, peeled and diced
1 medium carrot, ditto
1 tbs chopped parsley
2 tsp dried thyme, crumbled
1 cup beef stock
1/4 cup dry sherry (I had some amontillado, so I used that)
salt and pepper to taste

2 tbs melted butter
1 medium pumpkin.

Preheat oven to 325 F.

In a large pot, brown the beef in oil. Add the onions and garlic and stir until the onions are tender. Add potatoes, carrot, herbs, and beef stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer while you prepare the pumpkin.

Remove the top from the pumpkin and discard. Scoop out the seeds and stringy parts of pumpkin, leaving the flesh intact. Brush inside of pumpkin with melted butter.

Place pumpkin in a shallow baking pan. Stir sherry into the beef mixture, adjust seasoning, and spoon the stew into the pumpkin shell. Bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until pumpkin flesh is tender. Remove from oven carefully; if pumpkin is very soft it may split.

Ladle into bowls, scooping some of the pumpkin along with the stew. I served the stew with homemade rolls. In retrospect, the green bowl and the blue cloth weren't the best colour combination. Next time I'll try for a more appealing backdrop.

Dished up

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...