Your Best Beef Stew Ever

Beef stew is one of those recipes every home chef should know.Yet, how to make the perfect one is somewhat of a conundrum. Should wine be added? Or tomato sauce? Slow cooker or oven? Luckily there is a recipe that can lead to stew nirvana. One taste and it will be your go to recipe.

Of course it was the famed Julia Moskin who tackled this in yesterday's New York Times Food section.Ms. Moskin has made her fair share of the dish as well as its' French and Italian cousins. bouef bourguignon, daube and peposo. Am American beef stew doesn't have the sophistication of red wine. Onions and water first flavored our earliest versions, later it was beef broth and tomato sauce. These are good  and do give the meat and vegetables a certain flavor. however they don;t add any oomph.If you are making yours with a Pinot Noir or a Cote du Rhone, remember that it has to be cooked slowly.  The alcohol, acidity and fruitiness have to be tamed so they leave a tangy, syrupy taste that pairs well with the red meat. Remember too , red meat needs slow cooking too. It helps breaking down the collagen and, muscle fibrils. You could make stew in a slow cooker. The meat does have to be well browned before putting in in.A crockpot stew is a wonderful meal to come home to but the beef doesn't have  that caramelized , textured  quality an oven cooked stew would have. Ms. Moskin prefers an oven over a stove top any day. Bake it at 300 degrees Farenheit or even lower at 275 degrees. The meat softens while the liquids and aromatics blend into a rich complex sauce.

Funny enough Ms. Moskin doesn't write about what kind of meat to use in her article. It is mentioned in the recipe , though. Home chefs should use well marbled beef stew meat, namely chuck. No other cut will work. She also adds juniper berries is part of the traditional French recipe. Where to get them? Not surprisingly Target and Wal-mart sell the dried variety. You'll only need a dozen along with two bay leaves.As for the wine, a red non -sweet one (Ina Garten's bouef bourguignon calls for  Pinot Noir or a Cote du Rhone.),preferably from the Burgundy province but Chianti can also be used.Let the meat marinate in the wine , juniper berries and bay leaves for at least two hours  and less than a day. The vegetables used are also the ones used in the traditional recipe.It's a blend of carrots, onions and a large starchy potato, preferably an Idaho. More wine is also added, usually half a bottle along with three tablespoons of tomato paste and chicken broth.Many home chefs may be put off at the idea of adding bouquet garni but this is a simple mix of thyme, rosemary, more juniper berries and whole cloves. Orange peel is also in the mix to give the dish a fresh brightness. These are wrapped in a cheesecloth and dropped in. You can also toss in cubed panecetta or ventreche, a kind of French bacon.

This is the best stew recipe out there. It's also a relatively easy one that any home chef can make.Try it and enjoy the delicious meld of flavors form aromatics, to meat to a good Burgundy.

The Easiness of Mussels

For many cooks, a mussel dinner can be daunting.Bivalves are usually tricky to cook however that's quite the opposite with this traditional seafood. In fact anyone can make them and have an easy  but hearty meal.

Melissa Clark wrote about them and experimented with them in her A Good Appetite column in today's New York Times Dining section. She demystified the myth that mussels are not the easiest  to cook. They  are very simple. Most home chefs have always hated cleaning them because mussels are gritty with sand. All it takes is just a quick rinse under the e tap and make sure they're still living when you put them in the pot. A dead mussel will have an opened shell. Discard these .If you have bought wild mussels the cleaning is a bit more labor intensive. You have to pull out their beards and then soak them in cold water for about twenty minutes. This allows them to expel any residual sand . Afterwards scrub clean again.

Ms. Clark steams them with cauliflower basil and lime. She suggests using a water heavy vegetable like cauliflower works as do  cabbages and mushrooms. For summer you can steam them with corn or tomatoes, both have a high water content,All of these impart a nice flavor on the bivalve's  flesh Mussels can also be steamed with white wine and aromatics for a more sophisticated meal. You can also try  lemon water  and garlic as well or again white wine and oregano. Another way is just  water steamed with a side of butter or tomato sauce for a heartier spin.

Mussels are not as complicated to make as people make them out to be. They are relatively easy to clean and to cook. They make a hearty, briny good  meal with or without vegetables.