Married Cooking: Traveller’s Stew

We recently received our copy of Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook and have been excited to share some recipes we will try out. The first one on our list was Traveller’s Stew. Since I’m partial to stews, especially with the hectic schedule of law school, I decided to make some to eat after the online class.

The ingredients for the recipe are:

• ¼ cup All-Purpose Flour
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 ½ lbs. Beef stew meat cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil (plus more as needed)
• 1 cup dark beer
• 4 cups low-sodium beef broth
• 1 tsp sweet paprika
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and cut into ½-inch rounds
• 3 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
• ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

The changes I’ve made were:

• Didn’t add parsley
• Used olive oil and local potatoes

How I made the stew:

1. Combine the flour, a few pinches of salt, and pepper into a bowl. Add the beef and toss well. Make sure to pat dry your beef if it was frozen, coat it well, and dust off the excess flour mixture.

2. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Cook the beef in batches for around 5 minutes, turning to brown each side evenly. Transfer the cooked beef to a separate plate and let it rest. Add more oil if needed.

3. Pour the beer into the pot and use a wooden spoon to scrape up any brown bits. 

4. Return the browned beef into the pot, add the broth, and the paprika. In this case, I added a bit too much paprika, so don’t use a heaped teaspoon of paprika. Adjust the heat to low and simmer for around 1 ½ to 2 hours.

5. Add the onions, carrots, and potatoes to the pot and continue to simmer for 30 more minutes, until the vegetables are tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.

Next time I make it, I’ll serve it with a loaf of sourdough bread and thicken the stew a bit more for 15 more minutes. It’s hearty enough to feed four people in your party on a short rest. 

Please let us know what you think of this recipe in the comments below.

Tilapia in Cider Vinegar Sauce

Sometimes our culinary experiments lead us to come up with intricate and rich dishes, while other times they lead us to try out simpler things. This busy morning was one of those days leading up to the latter. After a quick survey of our available ingredients (including half a bag of frozen tilapia fillets), I brought out again “Bistro Cooking” by Patricia Wells to look up a quick and easy recipe for fish fillet. 

The recipe written as Le Turbot Au Vinagire Cidre can be used for just about any flatfish, not just turbot. This dish originally hailing from Normandy, France, requires the following ingredients: 

• 1 pound flatfish fillets
• ¼ cup best quality apple cider vinegar
• 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces
• Salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste (if using salted butter, go easy on the salt). 

Although turbot, flounder and other flatfish are traditionally used here, this lends itself well to delicately flavored fish such as tilapia. Cooking goes as follows: 

1. In a steamer, boil about 2 cups of water over high heat. Place the fish fillets in a single layer in the steaming basket, then reduce the heat to medium. Cover, then steam for about 5 minutes or until the fish is just opaque. 
2. In a small saucepan, bring the apple cider vinegar to boil over medium-high heat. Add the butter a few pieces at a time, whisking or stirring constantly. Take the saucepan on and off the heat if necessary, just to make sure the butter will not burn. Stir in all the butter till the sauce is smooth, then add salt and pepper to taste. 
3. Arrange the fish on a platter, then pour the sauce over. 

12 tablespoons of butter may sound like a lot, but it is necessary to take the acidic edge off the boiling hot vinegar. I thought at first that I did not have to add this much to the sauce, but one whiff of it (after adding just three tablespoons of butter) had my eyes watering! 

Since we do not have a steamer, we improvised by making an aluminum foil ring to sit in a large pot of water, and placed a small plate of fish on top of it before covering. Simple, and good!