On the Garden Path at 5~Acre Farm: Italian Stew Beef with Cheese Grits

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Italian Stew Beef with Cheese Grits


Italian Stew Beef with Cheese Grits and Collards

When I first started cooking in earnest, desiring to prepare tasty dishes, I studied recipes and watched cooking shows. I quickly learned that my mother's kitchen was severely lacking in a number of ingredients we'd never heard of, none-the-less used. Purchasing these ingredients was out of the question, some because of cost, but nearly all because we couldn't find them within 50 miles of our rural home, and we didn't have the internet back then to make everything available at the touch of a button. So quite a few interesting recipes were deep-sixed.

As my cooking skills increased, however, and my understanding of how various ingredients affect a dish grew, I learned to make substitutions for ingredients I didn't have. Experiments rendered successes and failures, and as I got better at it, the successes proved to be quite delicious!

Substituting ingredients certainly alters the outcome of a dish, but this is a significant step to take for anyone desiring to improve their culinary skills! Being able to make substitutions in a recipe is a leap away from being a cook, and a leap toward becoming a culinary creator!

And that brings us to today's recipe. Ree Drummond is The Pioneer Woman, and blogs about her life on an Oklahoma ranch. Now this woman knows how to cook! She prepares hearty, delicious meals for her family, and most of her recipes are her own, developed over years of standing behind a stove. Ree is so popular that she now has her own show on Food Network.

My recipe today, for Italian Stew Beef with Cheese Grits, is adapted from The Pioneer Woman's Spicy Stewed Beef with Creamy Cheddar Grits. Using what I had on hand, I recreated this recipe in a less spicy version since my dad can't handle spicy foods any more. Ree's recipe calls for Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce, which I think was the thickener in her recipe. I substituted a simple cornstarch thickener in my recipe. Before I added the thickener, I used a wand mixer to break up the large diced tomatoes, but it also broke up some of the beef chunks. I thought this would create a thickened sauce, but it just made the beef mixture slightly soupy. So don't you do this! Also, my grits were not firm enough. I've made adjustments for my errors in the recipe below. Check out my recipe, and Ree's recipe, if you like, and see what you like and what you'd change about them. Cooking doesn't have to be a stressful chore. It can be a fun and creative pass-time!

Italian Stew Beef with Cheese Grits

Ingredients for Beef:

1 Tbsp Canola Oil
1 Tbsp Butter
2 lbs Stew Beef
1 tsp minced Garlic
2 cups chopped Rainbow Bell Peppers
1 can Diced Tomatoes
1 1/2 tsp Italian Seasoning
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Pepper
1 1/2 - 2 cups Beef or Chicken Broth

Cornstarch Thickener:
1 Tsp cornstarch with 1 Tsp water, mixed until fluid, not lumpy

Ingredients for Grits:

1 Tbsp Canola Oil
1/2 cup finely diced Onion
1 cup Nora Mill Stone Ground Grits
4 cups Beef or Chicken Broth
2 cups grated Cheddar Cheese

Preparation of Beef:

Heat 1 Tbsp Canola Oil and 1 Tbsp Butter in large pot over high heat. Drop in the stew meat and let it brown for 1-2 minutes. Add 1 tsp minced garlic, chopped rainbow bell peppers, diced tomatoes, Italian Seasoning, 1 tsp Salt, 1/2 tsp Pepper, and 1 can Beef or Chicken Broth. Stir all together, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 2 1/2 - 3 hours until beef is very tender. While the meat simmers, check the fluid level occasionally and add more broth as needed. Near the end of cooking, bring the mixture back to a boil, and add cornstarch thickener while stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low again. If the mixture is not thick enough, add additional cornstarch thickener.

Preparation of Grits:

About an hour before the beef is finished cooking, start the grits. Add 1 Tbsp Canola oil to a 3 quart pot. Add 1/2 cup finely diced Onion. Saute until onions are soft but not brown. Add 4 cups of Beef or Chicken Broth and bring to a boil. Add 1 cup of Stone Ground Grits, and stir. Reduce heat to low and simmer 20-30 minutes. Add 1 cup Milk, and continue simmering. When the grits are done, remove from heat and add 2 cups grated Cheddar Cheese. The grits should be firm, not runny. If they aren't firm enough, add more grits and adjust cooking time.

Serve the beef over the grits. Add a side of collards if yo need a green.

Nora Mill Granary and Grist Mill in Helen, Georgia

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John and Michelle, and 5 Acre Farm

How We Came To Be

John was born and raised in Georgia by parents who lived incredible lives of their own, and passed on to John a rich family history from both sides. He was a die hard Boy Scout, and later, spent 17 years as a Troop Leader. He earned a dual Agriculture/Agricultural Engineering degree at ABAC in Tipton, where he also started the college's radio station. After college, John served on nuclear submarines in the Navy, where he once saved the lives of his shipmates, and, rumor has it, did many incredible things in the service of our country. He married and had a family, and after the Navy, worked briefly with the EPA before opening his own HVAC-Refrigeration company. John was inventive as a child, and that carried over into everything in his life. He is a fixer of severe mechanical problems, and an inventor of all kinds of things that improve on or simplify existing machinery, equipment, and ideas. His inventions are unique, and some of them may some day aide humanity, save lives, and save our planet if we can get the right people to listen.

My dad was career Army. I was born in France, and introduced, at a very young age, to the Virginia countryside, where we raised rabbits and chickens. After dad retired, we moved to North Carolina, his home state, where we spent many years on the coast, near Wilmington. Here, we had a garden, raised cows, pigs, chickens, and ducks, and fished commercially. Our freezer was always full of fresh Spot and shrimp, and oyster roasts were a weekly event! As a young adult I lived with my family in the mountains south of Asheville. Here too we had a garden, raised cows, pigs, chickens, and ducks, as well as geese and peacocks. I worked for many years with an arts council, Christian organizations, and other non-profits. I helped train missionaries, researched/wrote grants, produced professional documents, edited newsletters, and wrote a lot of publicity materials. I already had two Associate degrees, but in my late 30s I finally completed an undergraduate degree in English/Art History. For 20 years I was active in community theater, sang solos with a community choir, and danced with a show choir. Treasured memories! I moved to Georgia in late 1998, and married my first husband in 2002. I was 45. Eighteen months later, I was widowed.

John and I first met in 2000. After I was widowed, and John was divorced, we found each other again. Of like minds, spirits, and goals, our hearts came together quickly, and we married in 2005. Each of us has undergone Elijah House training, and we were both ordained into ministry in 2006. I have been a Christian counselor and prayer warrior for probably 30 years. John and I live to put God first in our lives, and in our dreams for this small piece of earth of which we are the caretakers.

We call our place "5 Acre Farm." John's father took this barren, overworked field from a larger parcel of farmland in the mid-70s. He fenced off about three-quarters of an acre for the house, and added plants, flowers, and trees. Elsewhere, he transformed the property through years of hard work, adding an apple orchard, peach trees, pears, two fig orchards, grape vines, and a greenhouse. John and I have been trying to continue his father's work on this land, adding to it with our own hopes and dreams, and our late-in-life efforts. Not a day goes by that I don't feel great respect for John's father, for the man he was, for the work he did here, and gratitude for the bounty we reap because of his hard work.

John and I are in our 50s, just starting life together, but with age and health trying to work against us. We aren't ready to sit down and take it easy. We have a goal to become self-sufficient by growing our own food (meat and vegetables), and getting off the grid. The challenges we face in doing this are age, health, and finances. John's inventiveness is being strongly applied, as is my gift for budget stretching and frugality. Our strength? The love we have for each other, and the trust that we are working inside the will of God.

One of the things we ask ourselves now and then is this: "Is it worth it?" I never had children. John's son has set his own path with family and career. There does not seem to be anyone we can leave this property to who will continue the work and the dream; one of John's grandchildren, perhaps, but they are very young right now, and do not yet notice or care.

So, is it worth it (all the work and expense) if there is every chance this land will end up in the hands of developers after we're gone? Well, our answer to that question so far is always "Yes, it's worth it." It's worth it to us, because of what we are accomplishing here in our lifetime. It's worth it because what we grow here we share with family, with friends, and with our community. And not just what we grow, but our faith and philosophy, our hopes and dreams, and our very desire to leave at least our little part of the world better than it was when we found it. We are living - consciously, and deliberately - a lifestyle that expresses who we are and what we believe. Does anybody care? Why don't read our blog, leave a comment, and let us know.