A Life, Lived

Comforting Beef and Porcini Mushroom Stew

Good lord, if there ever was a time for comfort food it is now.

I had stewing meat in the freezer and a big container of dried mushrooms in the pantry. Google pulled me to this recipe that looked pretty amazing.

One of the issues of stews made in the Instant Pot is that they can be too liquidy because all of the liquid stays in the pot rather than be boiled off during a long slow cooking process. By placing the dried mushrooms on top you ensure that some of this liquid is absorbed. You also ensure that the stew has that umami that comes from the mushroom soaking liquid (in this case the actual stew).

I made two changes to the recipe - I added a small canned of cherry tomatoes (any chopped tomatoes without added flavouring would work well) because I like the interplay that comes with tomato in a beef stew. I also did not thicken with flour and butter because I don't care for the taste flour leaves in the stew. Instead I thickened it with corn starch added to some beef broth.

This stew hit all the right notes. We enjoyed it on a mound of mashed potatoes with some bread pulled from the oven just before dinner.

Much needed comfort here . . .

Beef and Porcini Mushroom Stew

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pounds beef chuck, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 sprig of rosemary, de-stemmed and finely chopped (about 1 teaspoon)
1 medium red onion, roughly diced
1 celery stalk, cut into 1/2-inch slices
1/2 cup red wine (any tart, non-sweet red, like Chianti or Sangiovese)
1 cup salt-free beef stock
1 teaspoon salt (reduce if using salted stock and butter)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 ounce (30 grams) dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed
2 large carrots, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Preheat the pressure cooker (by pressing brown/sauté mode).

Add the olive oil and sear the beef cubes on one side (about 5 minutes). Add rosemary, onions, celery, red wine, stock, salt, and pepper. Mix the contents of the pressure cooker well. Sprinkle the mushrooms and carrots on top of the stew mixture.

Close the lid and pressure-cook for 15 minutes at high pressure. When time is up, open the pressure cooker with natural release (turn off the pressure cooker and wait for pressure to come down naturally, about 15 to 20 minutes).

In the meantime, in a small pan melt the butter and drizzle with flour. Mix into a paste and let it cook until the butter begins to make bubbles in the flour.

Remove the lid, tilting it away from you. Add about 6 tablespoons of the cooking liquid from the pressure cooker into the little pan with the flour paste and mix well to loosen the paste. Then, pour the mixture back into the pressure cooker base and mix well.

Bring the contents of the pressure cooker to a boil (by pressing brown/sauté mode) and let it simmer until thickened (about 5 minutes).

Travel Tuesdays - Amsterdam

So far retirement is grand. The one thing that would make it more grand would be the ability to travel again. LOL

That will come.

This morning I was lazing about the house - retirement is GREAT for that. When I finally got into the den to post my Travel Tuesday post the internet was down. Imagine how great that was for all the parents, students, and educators doing online learning today!

Anyway. 6 years ago I was traveling. My friend Nancy and I were exploring Amsterdam.

Sunday Funday

I'm not going to lie - today feels a bit confused for me.

It's the first Sunday of my retirement.

It is the first Sunday where I am not making a list in my mind of all of the things I need to do at work in the coming week.

For most of my life Sunday has meant work. As a student it was when I would do my homework and prepare for the week ahead. As a teacher it meant planning, marking, reading student journals. . . in short working my way through the piles of stuff I had brought home from school on the previous Friday. After I left the classroom it was focused on drafting correspondence for my assistant to format, reviewing materials, responding to 100s of emails, and preparing for the meetings scheduled in the upcoming week.

Sundays were not relaxing for me. IN fact, they were quite the opposite.

Generally I was awake in the night thinking of all of the things I needed to do during the upcoming day. I tried to keep the morning free but not long after lunch the stress of ignoring my list would generally prove too much and I'd find myself in front of the computer. Where I'd usually sit for anywhere from 3 - 8 hours.

I wonder how long it will take to turn that off?

I did wake in the night but when there were no jobs that needed to be prioritized on a mental list I rolled over and fell back asleep.

I still feel some pressure to sit at my computer and to do something (so I am doing this. :-))

Trust me - I am not complaining about this. It is just a disconcerting feeling right now but in the grand scheme of things . . . I'll take it!

Happy New Year

At midnight we celebrated two things - the end of a truly horrific year and the end of work for me.

Needless to say we popped the cork on a really good bottle of champagne!

A lot of people go into the new year making a list of things that they want to fix about themselves or their existence.

I refuse to do that this year.

Not for this reason though . . .

LOL

I know that I am far from perfect. I know there are plenty of things that I should try and change. I also know that if they were so easy to change it would have happened already and I wouldn't need to wait until some arbitrary calendar page flip to do so.

The real reason is that this is bound to be a year of transition. I've had a job of some sort or another since I was 11. Learning to live without work is going to be a transition. I have some vague plans of things I might like to do but I will leave them as vague mists in my mind until we see what comes together.

To anyone who stumbles upon this blather . . . all the best for a safe, healthy 2021 and may it have less of the drama and excitement that 2020 tossed our way.