Teleidoscope

Mon, Feb 04, 2008

Buff Stew Followup

Posted at 6:46 pm MST to Technology

It wouldn't hurt if the potato and carrot chunks were smaller next time. They held their shape really well

Needs something in the sauce to balance it. Or maybe fewer tomatoes, or red wine instead of the mead. It's tangy rather than curry-like, which is good, and what I was aiming for. But the sauce has a sort of acid finish on its own. It will be interesting to see what it's like tomorrow.

The sauce is fine when sopped up with last night's sourdough bread. Maybe it wanted flour instead of arrowroot as thickening to take the edge off.

It might also want more fat during or after the browning stage. Buffalo is a LOT leaner than beef.

I've got enough stew for several more meals, so I'll have chances to add things to the sauce. At the moment I'm thinking a little bittersweet chocolate might be interesting.

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Buffalo stew

Posted at 5:06 pm MST to Technology

1. pound buffalo chunks, silver skin removed, dredged in flour, browned in olive oil
   deglazed with 3/4 cup mead
2. small red potatoes, halved or quartered
3. carrots, cut into large chunks
4. celery stalks sliced on the bias
5. shallots, peeled and cut into chunks
6. oz 'baby bella' mushrooms, cleaned, end of stems cut off, cut into large chunks
   1/2 cup dried blueberries
   1/2 cup sundried julienned tomatoes

1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4-1/2 tsp ground mace
1/4 tsp cumin seeds, ground
some ground nutmeg

1. allspice berries, ground
   some whole cloves, ground (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 tsp after grinding)
   just under 3/4 tsp old dead ground coriander
2. very small cinnamon stick, ground
   1/4 tsp ancho flakes, ground
3. small pinches kosher salt

The veggies need to be left fairly chunky, so they won't disappear during the cooking.
Put everything into the crockpot on low, stir to mix the layers of ingredients, pour 1 cup of organic chicken broth over the top to help hydrate the berries and tomatoes and disperse the spices.

This all pretty well fills the 5 qt crock pot before the veggies cook down. Note spice quantities were kept small because only the coriander is an old supermarket spice. The rest are fresh from the importer and in some cases freshly ground as well

I couldn't get the bottle of regular mead open, so I used some from Redstone Meadery that has cinnamon and vanilla in it. It comes in a blue bottle with a wire-clamped stopper (like an old-fashioned mason jar) instead of a cork.

Since I'm working from home today, I stirred it every hour or so, mostly so carrots and potatoes on top would get pushed down into the cooking liquid. At noon I tasted it and added a little more salt, bearing in mind that I expected the gravy to be more concentrated at the end of the cooking.

Near the end of cooking I mixed a tablespoon and a half of arrowroot with water, then drizzled the mixture into the stew to thicken the gravy a bit (the flour from dredging the buffalo bits is not quite enough thickening). This is the first time I've tried arrowroot instead of cornstarch. It made the gravy thick and shiny, but I could probably have used less: there was less liquid than I thought in the lower layers of stuff in the crock pot, and the juice thickened up instantly when I put the arrow root in.

The stew is very dark colored: blueberries will do that. The potatoes are not blue, which would look weird: they are a dark golden brown. The meat is almost black, not gray the way it sometimes in in stew even if you brown it first.

This is a good day for stew-- it has been snowing all day. Time to eat, with some fresh bread I baked yesterday.

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