Cooking

Okay, I am officially giving up on beef stew.

I've made it twice now and both times it has been a disaster.

I spent yesterday running errands and cooking. I made gravy (for any non-Italians, that's tomato sauce), ricotta pie, and beef stew. Only the beef stew was a disaster.

I think the problem is that I have some romantic idea of beef stew and of myself making beef stew. I envision myself creating the perfect beef stew, you know that Dinty Moore kind of beef stew (only without all the chemicals and preservatives). There I am in the kitchen, the original Earth Mother, compentent, all-knowing, tossing in ingredients with joyous abandon and producing perfection. You know, that deep dark gravy that you need to sop up with bread and butter (mmmm....).

But that's not what I get.

I think the problem yesterday was too much water and really bad wine.

I spent a good hour at the store picking out some wine for cooking and for drinking. I was looking for a burgundy but all they had was huge jugs of burgundy. Basically I was looking for something not worth drinking but worth cooking with. Big mistake. If you are going to cook with it, you better want to drink it.

My first clue that it was going to be bad was that it was called El Toro and it had a little plastic bull attached to it, which I swear I didn't notice in the store. Now you know a wine is going to be bad if it has it's own plastic toy attached. Kind of like the happy meal of wine.

I tasted it and didn't like but, oh no, I still dumped it in the crockpot.

The first beef stew was too salty because I didn't dilute the canned beef stock enough. This time I diluted it too much.

After hours of cooking I had a soupy mess and you could still taste that damn wine.

Someday I am going to produce that romantic vision of stew I have in my head. Meaty, fragrant, with dark flavorful gravy, the kind of stew given to starving orphans in Dickensian novels, either that or I am going to the store for Dinty Moore.