The simple is not always so simple

 

I thought of another generation of cooks today—my mother and perhaps your mother or grandmother. I thought I could remember Mom just putting a pot of stew on in the morning and letting it simmer all day while she did a myriad of other things. Oh, maybe she stirred it or checked to see that it was simmering and not boiling, but she didn’t spend the whole day working on that stew. Or at least that’s what I think I remember.

I made stew today, and it occupied the better part of the day. First, I had to cut up the stew meat. Most of the butchers at Central Market are men, and I’m making a stereotyped conclusion here, but I bet it’s their wives who make the stew at their homes. If so, why don’t those wives teach those men that for stew you want one-inch cubes, not hulking three and four inches? I always have to trim any time I order stew meat.

According to the recipe I was making, the meat had to marinate an hour—in black coffee. Trust me, I’ve done this before and it was great. What I don’t remember is that it was this labor intensive. Maybe that’s a function of age. I readily admit it takes me longer to cook a meal these days. Anyway, while it marinated, I caught up with some of my daily life online.

Then I had to drain the meat, dredge it in seasoned flour, and brown it. All of this had to be done in batches—three to be precise. That’s not exactly something you can do while multi-tasking. Finally, I got it all browned, beef broth made, and had the meat simmering in a pot of broth, a bit more coffee, and a touch of vinegar. Then I washed the dishes I’d dirtied to that point—I am fanatical about cleaning as I go, because I can’t stand a messy kitchen.

The meat simmered, I proofread the newsletter I’d been working on and ate an open-faced cream cheese/watercress/avocado sandwich. I should have toasted the bread—would have given the whole thing a touch of crispness it needed—but I hadn’t initiated the new toaster oven yet, a complicated process for which I want moral support.

I let the meat simmer for a couple of hours and then refrigerated it while I took a nap. Great debate in my own mind—could I leave it sit for an hour and a half or refrigerate it? I did the latter, but I think it was needless—when I pulled it out to put it back on the stove, it was still a bit warm.

By this time, it’s well after four, so I rough chopped a huge onion (recipe called for two medium), counted out twelve baby carrots and stirred those into the stew. Next, peeling eight small but not tiny red potatoes—take my word for it, they are hard to peel and my mother would have slapped my hands if she’d seen how much potato I wasted and all those little bits of peel I left untouched. I halved those, and they went into the pot. I tasted the beef at this point, and it was pretty chewy. Long story short, I let the whole thing simmer until seven o’clock, when I tested gain—meat was pretty tender, potatoes were nicely soft, test carrot was still pretty crunchy (when I got one for dinner it was nicely mushy, which Christian dislikes).

At seven I called Jordan to come get their dinner. Told her Christian could pick out the carrots though he might not need to, Jacob could pick out the onion because I’d left it in big pieces (so much easier for me), and she could pick out the potatoes. Me? I’m dished up a soup plate full of everything and ate it with relish. Maybe it was worth that long day. And maybe there will be leftovers for tomorrow night, and I won’t have to cook. I’m hoping the Lord will understand that I missed virtual church today because although I was not feeding the multitudes, I was feeding my family. Important to me, even if in these days of quarantine, we cannot eat together.

Two more weeks of rodeo, and then maybe we can get back into some kind of normalcy. I’m also reading that the omicron surge is about to peak and should subside by the middle of February. Fingers crossed. Warmer weather would also ease the discontent of quarantine. I could have company on the patio—including Jordan and Christian—and that would cheer me so much. The cold makes me feel trapped. It’s supposed to warm up this week, maybe enough for outdoor dining. I have a tentative lunch date if it does. The good news is that at five-thirty it was still daylight. We are headed in the right direction. In many ways.