Go anywhere in the Castro on a Sunday late morning or early afternoon and you’ll see restaurants crowded with folks indulging in Sunday brunch. Brunch has become the Sunday meal of choice, but it wasn’t always that way. There was a time when the Sunday meal was Sunday dinner, not brunch, and for some folks, Sunday dinner still holds firm.
A few comparisons need to be made here, in order to clarify the distinction between the two varieties of Sunday meals.
- Time: Sunday brunch tends to be late-morning; 11:00 AM is ideal. Sunday dinner, on the other hand, is an afternoon affair; 3:00 – 4:00 PM seems about right.
- Venue: Sunday brunch is typically eaten out or in a party atmosphere; Sunday dinner is by definition a home-cooked meal, more family-oriented.
- Menu: Sunday brunch tends towards breakfast foods—omelets, pancakes, fritattas, etc. Sunday dinner focuses on slow-cooked main-dish stuff like chicken fricasee, beef stew, roasted turkeys and hams, corn beef & cabbage, tureens of potato soup, etc.
I’m not all that keen on Sunday brunch but I just love Sunday dinner. There’s something reassuring, something Saturday-Evening-Post-ish, about that meal with its long-simmered main dishes that no working person could possibly make on a weekday. You can head out for brunch on a whim, but a fine Sunday dinner requires pre-planning and a late-morning start.
For today I’m making a traditional beef stew for Sunday dinner, to be served with homemade biscuits and a fresh fruit salad. As I sit here writing, the stew is simmering away contentedly, scheduled to be ready about 4:00 PM or so.
That’s the real trick to a good beef stew: sufficient simmer time. It cannot be rushed.
Finicky preparation and a long simmer mandate quality ingredients. Eel River grass-fed organic stew beef costs $9.00 a pound, almost three times what you would pay for Safeway stew beef, but it’s worth every penny. Fine organic onions, carrots, celery, and garlic cost only a soupçon more than the regular variety, and may be cheaper depending on the season. I could make my own beef stock, I suppose, but instead there are some perfectly acceptable organic, low- or no-salt, chemical-free varieties out there. I am not referring to Swanson. I had just enough leftover Petit Syrah from last week to add some depth, and I always use a first-quality Italian tomato paste. Heck, I’m even fussy about the bay leaves—Morton & Bassett—and my olive oil (Barani, locally produced.)
So it will be a lovely stew, much better than Granny could ever have made. (OK: I’m not playing fair. My Granny was a radiologist at a big Houston hospital, and I’m not sure if she even knew how to boil water.)
Allow me to put on my Julia Child wig (and step into shoe-lifts to achieve the requisite Amazonian stature) and offer some technical tips:
- Use only a thick, heavy pot for making stews, never anything with thin sides and bottom. Cast iron is your absolute best bet, either plain buck naked or the porcelain-clad variety such as made by Le Creuset. I have a good ol’ Lodge chicken fryer which doubles perfectly as a stewpot, and I’ve never had any problems with heat distribution, scorching, or evaporation.
- Dry the beef thoroughly before cooking; it won’t brown very well otherwise.
- Make sure that you brown the beef thoroughly on at least two, preferably more, sides. Don’t crowd it in the pot, and really let it sizzle and smoke; don’t get impatient. That doesn’t mean burn it, mind you—look for a fine reddish mahogany brown color on at least two sides.
- If you’re a neophyte cook, remember: don’t cover the pot while you’re browning the beef, because it won’t brown. (Steaming trumps browning.)
- Remove the browned beef from the pot, freshen up the oil if necessary, and then cook the standard veggies—onions, carrots, celery, a bit of garlic—enough to give them a fine caramel sheen, but stop way short of actually cooking them through. One onion, three stalks of celery, two garlic cloves, and one large carrot will be about right for a pound of stew beef.
- Don’t use too much flour, or don’t use any at all. Two tablespoons is my maximum for a big serves-4 pot. Blend the flour well with the veggies and let it cook a bit in the pot, not enough to burn it, but enough to brown it just a smidgen. Don’t put the beef back in until after you’ve done that, because the beef juices will prevent the flour from browning.
- About one part red wine to 4 parts beef stock seems to give the best results for me. You can live without the red wine, but it’s awfully nice, especially if you use a complex red like a petit syrah or a deep rich burgundy. You won’t need more than about a tablespoon of tomato paste.
- Use real beef stock, not that hideous beef bouillon dried stuff. No cans, either.
- Ix-nay on the fancy spices and herbs. Practice a light touch with the salt, but be sure to use enough that it seeps gradually into the food during the long simmer. Ditto light hand with some pepper. Add one bay leaf. That’s it.
- If your stew beef is prime quality, you probably won’t need to "skim" the stew as it comes to a boil. But if a grayish froth develops on the surface, grab a spoon and skim it off.
- Be sure to allow for a good three hours of simmering time as an absolute minimum. Simmering can be stovetop or in the oven. If you use a cast iron pot, it won’t matter all that much, but the oven might give you better heat distribution if your pot is relatively lightweight.
- If you’re going to add potatoes, wait until the last half hour before adding them, and start with rather more liquid than you would have used otherwise. Don’t use too many potatoes—about two standard-size Yukon Golds maximum, and leave them in big chunks, not small pieces. I prefer to leave them unpeeled.
- The very last thing to do before serving is to blend in about two tablespoons of fresh (unsalted!) butter, and be sure to taste-test to make sure there’s enough salt. It’s tempting to skip the butter, but it makes a lot of difference—and two tablespoons of butter incorporated into several quarts of stew aren’t going to befoul anybody’s arterial flow.
Two images: my Lodge chicken-fryer-and-stewpot, and a peek at Sunday dinner at the halfway point as it simmers happily atop the grand old Wedgwood stove. In a bit, I’ll fire up the oven and get them thar biscuits a-cookin’.
