Saturday, April 05, 2008

It Must Be Snowing Somewhere (Fat Free) Stew


This recipe came together over the last couple of days. I knew that I wanted to do something 'stewish', and I knew I wanted to use up the root veg sitting in my fridge - namely the interesting and never before used Navet (French) Turnips. I also wanted to do something with the remaining Seitan I had made last weekend; K added an interesting dimension by suggesting that I use the Pearl Barley in our pantry, rather than the Polenta I had originally conceived of as this recipe's grain.



I can honestly say that this stew was completely worth the simmer time. The flavours were amazing, the whole concoction was fat free, and the seitan I added towards the end gave it an amazing depth of texture.

Ingredients:
-5 navet turnips
-1 yellow onion
-4 large carrots
-1 small butternut squash
-1 1/2 cup of pearl barley
-1/2 pound of seitan
-fresh thyme, sage, rosemary, pepper
-6 cups (or more) of water or veg broth
-2 tablespoons of corn starch

How To:
I cut the veg into bite size pieces, and set the water to boil on the stove top. When I had a gentle boil I added the veg and turned the heat down to medium. I left the veg to simmer for 40 minutes. Towards the end of the simmer, I added a little bit of soy sauce to a pan and seared the seitan a tiny bit, I then threw the wheat-meat and the pearl barley into the bubbling stew. With ten minutes left, I added the 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, and I let it bubble a bit while I cleaned the kitchen floor and played with the new online photo editor I stumbled upon (Picnik).

We served the stew with a nice bottle of eco-wine.

Chef Statement: (I am only saying this because I want all my vegan friends to give this recipe a try): This was the most amazing stew I have ever had in my life. It was delicious.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That stew looks and sounds incredible. It's really warm here today and I STILL want to eat it for dinner!

Thank you for the nice compliments. I actually made my sister-in-law's wedding cake in England, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to make one in Brussels!

Kumquat Peekapoo said...

This looks great! I'm going to save this for our next cold day. I've never tried turnips before, and this looks like a great excuse to give them a shot.

Anonymous said...

I like the photo embellishments! Stew looks good too!