Beef and cabbage stew
This is one of my top recipes for beef stew. The use of spices is brilliant here - thanks to the knowledgeable lady who developed the recipe! In terms of food energetics this stew is neutral to warming in nature. Beef is nourishing Blood and Qi, cabbage and tomatoes are building yin.
Origin: Anna Ciesielska “Philosophy of Flavours”
Serves: 7-8
Ingredients:
1 – 1.2 kg slow roasting or stewing beef (here silverside cut used), cut into cubes
500 g onions (4 medium onions), peeled and chopped
3 cloves of garlic, put through a garlic press
400 g sweetheart cabbage or spring, green cabbage, roughly chopped; white cabbage would be too tough for this
200 g tomato passata
2 heaped tsp potato starch dissolved in 1/4 cup of cold water
Herbs and spices: dried thyme, ground caraway, black pepper, ground ginger, ground coriander, mild chilli powder, salt, dried basil, turmeric
Method:
season beef adding: 1 tsp black pepper, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp dried basil. Mix it well. The seasoning can be done the day before, just leave meat in the fridge overnight.
before you start frying the meat put the kettle on and boil some water
heat the frying pan with 2 tbsp of good frying oil (I use avocado oil, ghee or lard) add meat in batches to not overcrowd the pan and fry on a high heat until coloured
transfer fried meat into a large saucepan with lid,
pour boiling water so that the meat is almost covered, add 1 tsp thyme,
fry onions in the same frying pan the meat was fried to scoop up those lovely flavours, add some oil if necessary, transfer softened onions to the sauce pan, add 1 heaped tsp ground caraway,
add garlic, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp mild chilli. Cover with the lid and cook on a low heat for about 2 hours. Meat should be almost cooked.
add chopped cabbage,
1 tsp salt, cook under lid until cabbage is soft, for about 15-20 minutes
add the passata and cook for further 10 minutes. If there is too much liquid (it usually is the case), take the lid off, increase the heat output and boil the liquid off, stir frequently, it’s easy to burn the stew at that stage. The amount of sauce should be a little under the meat level.
add 1/2 tsp turmeric
stir in dissolved potato starch vigorously, make sure there are no lumps of glut
add black pepper to taste, cook for further 2 minutes.
