duffystar Food Journal

You ever have one of those epiphanies that is so delightful just thinking about it distracts you for the remainder of the day? Well at about 9:30 this morning, I had one that involved beer and 5 pounds of raw meat. It was glorious.

A little backstory. I spent all last summer participating in the One Local Summer exercise, where I committed to cooking one entirely locally sourced meal once a week, for each week of the summer. It was amazing. I not only took a lot of pleasure in each week's meal, I learned more and more about what was available, what wasn't and why every week. I also met

several amazing people in my community who are doing great things when it comes to ethical and sustainable food sources. It's also something I encourage anyone curious about where their food comes from to do--it doesn't take an overwhelming commitment to do one meal a week and is both educational and rewarding.

Anyway, since the end of the summer, I've continued to use most of the local sources I found and think that I eat about 80% locally, although I don't necessary make an all-local meal every week. Every once in a while, though, inspiration strikes, and I spend about a day pondering how best to use only the local ingredients I have at hand.

The epiphany I had at 9 am went a little something like this: I'm excited, because a local beef company (Brandt Beef) has just started to set up a booth at my weekly farmer's market, and I have a five-pound bag of USDA Prime stew meat in my fridge. I also have been recently gifted a Le Creuset dutch oven that I'm clamoring to use at every moment. So I'm daydreaming about the stew meat, and trying to come up with a boeuf bourgogne recipe that I can pull off in less than three hours. Somewhere in the process I start mentally scanning my fridge's contents, trying to take stock of the veggies I have on hand, when I remember the beer I picked up from a trip to a local brewery over the weekend. It's an oatmeal chocolate stout, and I'm thinking it would probably go pretty well with beef stew. And then it hits me: I'm not simply going to drink the beer with dinner, I'm going to make dinner with the beer. Oatmeal chocolate stout and prime-grade, corn-fed beef. This alone would have distracted me all day long, but in going over my fridge's contents in my head, I realized I could make an entirely local oatmeal chocolate stout stew. Call me a locavore, but I was pretty excited.

Here's the recipe I devised. I used carrots, turnips, and butternut squash because it's what I had on hand; potatoes, parsnips, and other winter squashes would work just as well. Also, because I did want to save some of the beer to drink with dinner, I ended up using a combination of stout, red wine, and chicken stock as my liquid.

As for the name, Captain Stout is the name of the beer I picked up over at Alpine Beer Company. Oh, and one caveat, I didn't have any local chicken broth, so this recipe ended up being only 99% local.



Captain Stout Stew

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS
1.5 lbs. stew meat, cubed
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 tsp. tomato paste
1 tsp. salt
2 cloves garlic, diced

3/4 cups good oatmeal stout (I used Alpine Captain Stout)
3/4 cups good red wine (I used San Pasqual 2002 Cabernet)
2 cups chicken broth
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme
1 tsp. honey
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

2 cups carrots, sliced
2 turnips, peeled and cut into eighths
1 small butternut squash, peeled and cut into cubes, seeds reserved (I had a really small one on hand--you may want to only use half of a larger one)

DIRECTIONS:
preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

pat dry the stew meat and season with salt and pepper
heat 1 Tbsp. oil in large dutch oven over medium heat. Add half the stew meat to the pot and brown on all sides, about 10 minutes. Transfer to clean plate. Repeat with remaining stew meat.

Reduce heat to low and add remaining Tbsp. oil. Add onions and cook 5 minutes, scraping up any brown bits if possible. Increase heat to medium low, add tomato paste and salt and continue to cook 10 minutes until onions are soft but not burnt. Add garlic and saute for 30 seconds until fragrant.

Add beer, stirring vigorously to scrape up any brown bits. Add wine, chicken broth, thyme, bay leaf, and honey and increase heat to medium. Add browned meat, carrots, turnips, and squash and bring to a rapid simmer.

Cover pot and transfer to oven. Cook for 2 hours.

While stew is cooking, rinse and dry butternut squash seeds. Toss with 1 tsp. oil, 1 tsp. sea salt and 1 tsp. pepper. Spread on oiled baking sheet and bake in 300 degree oven for 25 minutes. Let cool slightly.

To serve: spoon generous heapings of stew in bowls and top with a sprinkle of toasted squash seeds. Serve with thick slices of rustic country bread and either the beer or wine used in the stew.

(pulled from the diaries - Kate)

I live in San Diego, so there's not too many times when the weather changes my mood. Every once in a while though, we'll get an especially chilly day, or a surprisingly prominent drizzle, or a slightly humid evening, and I'll find myself with a weather-related craving. You know--lemonade in the heat of summer, a steaming bowl of soup on a windy, rainy day. That kind of thing.

I know it's snowing on the East coast, so excuse the mildness of the occasion. But it was cold today (a whopping 51-degrees), mostly because I forgot my jacket, and I found myself walking around for an hour between work and meeting up with a dinner date with little but a scarf and a sweater. By the time I headed to the restaurant, I had worked up quite a chill.

I didn't even realize I was craving anything until I stepped into this gorgeous new restaurant downtown and found myself sitting at a marble bar, surrounded by new mahogany and festive Christmas decor. I'm not one to usually order red wine before dinner, but when I scanned the wine list, it just popped out at me: syrah.

It was Kenwood's Jack London 2003 Syrah and it was perfect. One whiff and my chill was gone; one sip and my scarf was tossed to the chair behind me. Looking around, seeing the dark wood, the crowded room, tinsel and evergreen and ribbon, and holding this rich, heavy glass of wine, I realized it finally felt like winter.

They say you don't get to experience the seasons in Southern California, but I disagree. You can encounter the seasons, you just have to try harder to seek them out, and perhaps savor the moments you accidentally find. Today, winter was a glass of lush, velvety Kenwood Syrah. It was just as satisfying as sliding down a powdery slope, and just as comforting as a glass of hot chocolate around a fire.

It took me two hours to finish that glass--I carried it with me to the dinner table and didn't take the last sip until just before dessert arrived. With each swill, it felt a little more like winter. It was the best glimpse of a season I've had all year.