Beef Stew with Gouda Toasts
Ingredients
for the stew:
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 2 carrots, diced
- 2 parsnips, diced
- 2 stalks celery, diced (with greens!)
- 4 Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed
- 1 3/4 lb cubed sirloin
- 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 teaspoons mustard powder
- 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
- fine flour like Wondra
- salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- beef stock
topping:
- 4 slices stale crusty bread
- 1-2 tablespoons Dijon
- 3/4 cup Old Amsterdam Gouda
Instructions
- In a medium, Dutch or French oven saute the onions, thyme, spices, carrots, celery, potatoes and parsnips in butter until the vegetables begin to soften.
- Toss meat with flour. Add meat to the vegetables. Stir until the meat is lightly browned. Add the stock to just cover the mixture.
- Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer, covered, 45 minutes or until the beef is tender, stirring occasionally.
- Preheat oven to 375.
- Spread bread with mustard, place mustard side go on stew. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake about five minutes or until the cheese is melted.
I feel like I’m really excelling at ugly but tasty food lately. I wanted to share this because it was amazing but you will have to deal with the ’70s cookbook vibe. We still are doing most of our cooking at home, especially with the newest variant (and still haven’t eaten in a restaurant since March 2020!), doing big grocery shops, and trying to stretch out the time between shopping. I’m not perfect, I did do a yarn and crafting run yesterday so I can make both a cardinal using my pin looms and a tote bag with a quote from Yellowjackets on it but I’m skipping the grocery store for a bit. I figure the less I am out and about the less chance I have of getting Covid and the fewer people I am potentially coming in contact with I could unknowingly spread it to.
Which leads me to trying to make dishes that are both delicious (this was!) and uses up ingredients I already have. In this case, I had some lovely Old Amsterdam Gouda and stale bread. What a combo! I was going to make some sort of croton situation when I remembered making this stew based on one I had in Lille. I felt like I had just made this stew but it was in the before times and time has no meaning now. In that stew, you used both cookies and mustard spread bread as a thickener. I thought, why not take that idea, add a French onion soup vibe and top a mustard-spiked stew with mustard and cheese topped bread. I’m calling it toast here to be classy but it’s really stale bread with mustard and cheese that magically rehydrated and sinks into the stew with each bite. It was so good! I felt so clever making it! The stew was a real savory sensation–not hot but spicy and that aged Gouda brought it all together.
It is not a cute dish but it is one I would happily eat again and again.
