Food Friday

There have been requests for my "Stewart" recipe

So here it is more or less. No, this isn't being given in standard recipe format.

In a heavy bottomed pot brown one chopped onion

then add meat and brown.There was lots  of meat so I browned it in small  batches. I transferred the browned meat to a slow- cooker.

My husband isn't a fan of onions, and it was his birthday so there was just one onion. I then looked in my fridge and found a whole bunch of vegetables . I hacked up most of a massive bag of carrots into large chunks. I also had most of a celery which also got hacked up. Our Internet grocer had sent me sweet potatoes the size of Cleveland a few weeks back, I cut up the last one or two into the stew.

There was a bit of whiskey left in a bottle, I threw that in, a stew is always improved with a bit of booze.. I think we also had a couple of bottles of red wine in the fridge with a few ounces of wine left in the bottle. I threw the wine dregs into the slow-cooker as well.

Our Internet grocer had had a   special on canned corn so I threw in a can. I then set the slow cooker on low and left it alone for several hours.  I came back and added spices ( I can't swear to what I added  but assume that there was black pepper and cinnamon) I also noticed that the stew was fairly wet. I noticed a container of tapioca on the shelf above the slow cooker. remembering how often tapioca flour is added to commercial food stuff to thicken it, I added tapioca to the stew. I also tasted it and it was a little bland, I added a big glop of mustard and a large glug of pomegranate molasses, adding that necessary mixture of salty, tangy, sweet and sour. I suppose I could have added barbecue sauce or ketchup to do accomplish the same thing, but I was in the mood for the clear un -muddied flavors that I added.

Today I made what I think of as silk road chicken. I made a mixture of ground spices, most of which were traded along the silk road. The Israeli spice company Pereg makes terrific spice mixtures. I love them because they are not made with salt . If I expect to wear shoes, I need to limit my salt intake. I like food with flavor,so I tend to substitute lots of flavor for where other people would add salt.

Pereg's mixtures are good right out of the jar. But I like to combine  flavors so I use a combination of Pereg mixtures .

If you don't have access to an Israeli grocery store , the coffee mixture contains, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and cardamon. The meat-ball mixture contains ginger, cinnamon, white pepper, allspice, rosebuds, nutmeg and cloves. Five spice contains cinnamon, ginger nutmeg and anise.

I just turned the chicken over so all of it would be crispy  and  grabbed a  wing as a snack. The flavor was dark and complex.  The spices serve as a sort of a crust. It's nearly no prep-time but you get a whole lot of flavor in the end.

What else am I serving?? Barley and kamut pilaf that I baked in the oven while the chicken was cooking flavored with a bag of frozen chicken juice from a previous Shabbat, and a baby field green salad, two challas i had baked last week and stored in the freezer and dessert is still up in the air...I have some left over pumpkin non -dairy ice cream from a couple of weeks ago.  That may do it. We only have two guests. but if you have any brilliant dessert ideas to share in the next couple of hours, please do.