A SLOW COOKING SORT OF DAY

Winter drags on. Today is grey, overcast and cold. Which puts me in the mood to simmer something savory all day—soup, stew or a braise. The warmth and aroma while it’s bubbling away on the stove promise a comforting meal.

Ready for all-day simmering--a pot of beef shanks.

Today I’ve got beef shanks, a cut of meat so tough that slow cooking is the only way to make it edible. The shank is the lower leg of the animal. It’s very lean muscle with sinews and connective tissue. The white membrane that encases the long, tubular muscle looks like fat, but is mostly collagen that converts into gelatin when cooked. It gives the stew flavor and substance (and causes it to set-up like a jelly when cooled).

You may know beef/veal shank better as osso buco, Italian-style braised shanks. They are cross-cut slices including the marrow bone. I’m using the boneless, cylindrical  muscle that runs the length of the bone. In Spanish, it’s called jarrete or morcillo. Morcillo is usually added to cocido, a one-pot boiled dinner, to add substance to the broth.

The shank is a tubular-shaped muscle, full of connective tissue. It needs long, slow cooking to become tender.

I made this with jarrete de ternera, boneless shank of “veal,” which is actually young beef, not true veal. Cut into thick, cross-wise slices, the meat was fork-tender in about 2 ½  hours. A larger piece of meat may take longer.

Shank meat shrinks considerably during cooking. Two to three pounds look like a huge amount of meat, but once braised, the meat loses bulk as it flavors the gravy.

I cooked the shanks on top of the stove. They can also be slow-cooked in the oven (325ºF for about four hours) or in a slow cooker (about 8 hours on low).

You can cook the shank the day before you intend to serve it. Let the stew cool, making sure the meat is submerged in the cooking liquid so that it doesn’t harden when exposed to the air. Cover and refrigerate overnight. The following day, lift off any congealed fat from the top and reheat the stew.

After removing meat, carrots and potatoes, you might want to sieve the cooking liquid/gravy. If desired, the remaining solids—the diced onions, carrots and peppers that started cooking with the meat—can be pureed to thicken the gravy.

Leftovers? Shredded, the meat makes a good filling for tacos. If lots of flavorful gravy remains once the meat is gone, cook more vegetables in it and turn it into soup.

Cooked until tender, chunks of beef shank share the stew pot with carrots and potatoes. Add other vegetables if you wish.

A hint of spring to come! While the stew was cooking, I thinned the carrot patch and added these baby ones to the pot at the last minute.

Fat carrots and baby carrots plus potatoes go into the stew.

The stew makes lots of flavorful cooking liquid. Use any that's leftover to make soup.

Meat is fork-tender after hours of cooking.

Slow-Cooked Beef Shank
Xarrete Estufado

This recipe is from Galicia in northwest Spain. In the galega language, jarrete is xarrete and estofado, stew, is estufado.

Serves 4-6.

2 ½ pounds boneless beef or veal shank
4 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon coarse salt
¼ teaspoon black peppercorns
1 clove
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Pinch of thyme
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 ½ cups chopped onions
½ cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
1 teaspoon pimentón (paprika)
Red pepper flakes (optional)
1 cup chopped tomato
½ cup dry fino Sherry
2 tablespoons brandy
4 cups meat stock or bone broth
2 bay leaves
Salt
4 carrots, peeled
1 pound potatoes, peeled and cut in 2-inch pieces
Chopped parsley, to serve

Cut the shank crosswise into 1 ½ -inch slices. Place them in a shallow bowl or tray.

Before cooking, the meat is seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and parsley.

Crush the garlic in a mortar with the coarse salt, peppercorns and clove. Place the mixture in a small bowl and add the parsley, thyme and 1 tablespoon of oil. Rub the spice mixture all over the meat. Allow to set at room temperature for 45 minutes or, covered and refrigerated, up to 8 hours.

Heat remaining 4 tablespoons of oil in a large stew pot. Brown the pieces of shank on both sides, 5 minutes, and remove them. Add the onions, carrots and bell pepper to the oil and sauté until onion begins to brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in the pimentón and red pepper flakes, if using. Add the tomato and continue cooking until tomato begins to fry in the oil, 5 minutes. Add the Sherry and brandy and cook 3 minutes. Add the meat stock.

Return the pieces of shank to the stew pot. Add the bay leaves and salt to taste. (Amount of salt depends on how salty the stock already is. Remember, as cooking liquid reduces, salt will intensify.) Scrape any remaining garlic-spice rub into the pot.

Bring the liquid to a boil, then cover the pot and turn down the heat to a simmer. Cook the shanks 2 hours, stirring the pot occasionally. Meat should be tender enough that it can be pulled apart easily with two forks. If not, cook another 45 minutes. Add the carrots and potatoes and cook until vegetables are tender, 30 minutes.

If desired, the gelatinous rim on the pieces of meat can be removed before serving. Serve hot garnished with additional parsley or cool and refrigerate up to 3 days. 

Beef shank also goes into Madrid Style Boiled Dinner (Cocido).

An overcast February day puts me in the mood for slow cooking. The silvery line on the horizon is the Mediterranean Sea. Not so blue today.

 

CLAY POT—THE ORIGINAL SLOW COOKER

My olive picking is finished for this season. I was outside picking a few hours every day that it didn’t rain. My son, Ben, cut down branches that I couldn’t reach.  We took 150 kilos of olives to the mill and came home with 14 liters of new oil.

On picking days, I didn’t have much time to think about cooking. So I turned to some traditional dishes from rural Spain, such as this slow-cooked beef stew from the province of Ciudad Real, in the southern part of Castilla-La Mancha. 

Beef and vegetable stew is slow-cooked in a clay pot.

All the ingredients are put to cook together—thus the name, tojunto, a contraction of “todo junto”, meaning “all together”. Supposedly this allowed the women of Almagro to get on with their lace-making (they make very pretty bobbin lace); the shepherd to keep the cheese-making going (Manchego cheese comes from here), workers in vineyards (Valdepeñas and La Mancha wines) and olive groves to keep working right up until dinner and the hunter in the fields to have a meal ready when he returned to camp.

In rural Spain, a sturdy dish such as this stew is served for the main meal of the day, around 2 pm.

Everything goes into the stew pot—preferably a clay pot, or olla de barro—at the same time and cooks a fuego lento—on a slow fire, without stirring, until the meat is tender. Clay-pot cooking is a lot like today’s slow cookers that keep a low and steady heat. A clay pot also keeps the food warm for an extended time, meaning a meal that can wait.

This stew is not thickened. Put the potatoes in whole, so they don’t break up with long cooking. Vegetables such as fresh green beans get very-well cooked. But, that’s sort of comforting.

Flank steak or chuck, cut into cubes, is a good cut for this slow-cooked stew. (Tojunto is also made with lamb, pork, chicken or rabbit.) Saffron is grown in this region of La Mancha. It adds subtle flavor and color to the stew. You can use regular sweet pimentón (paprika) or smoked pimentón.

I served the stew with pickled red onions and my home-cured olives.

Meat, potatoes and vegetables cook together.

“Altogether” Beef Stew

Tojunto

Serves 4 to 6.

1 onion, quartered and sliced

1 green bell pepper, cut in 1-inch pieces

1 large tomato (or 3 plum tomatoes), peeled and cut in eighths

2 cloves chopped garlic

1 large carrot, peeled and quartered

4 medium potatoes, peeled

1 ½ pounds beef, cut in 1 ½-inch pieces

Pinch of ground cloves

Freshly ground black pepper

2 bay leaves

Sprig of thyme

¼ teaspoon saffron threads, crushed

1 teaspoon sweet pimento (paprika)

¼ cup hot water

4 ounces green beans, cut in 1-inch lengths (1 cup)

2 teaspoons salt

¼ cup olive oil

½ cup white wine

1 cup water

Chopped parsley to serve

Place the onion, pepper, tomato, and garlic in a cazuela or stew pot. Add the carrot, potatoes and veal or beef. Sprinkle the meat with cloves and pepper. Tuck the bay leaves and thyme around the meat. 

Add ingredients all together.

Combine the crushed saffron and pimentón in a small bowl. Add ¼ cup hot water and stir to dissolve. Pour the liquid over the meat. Place the green beans on top. Sprinkle with salt. Pour over the oil and wine plus 1 cup of water.

Cover the cazuela or pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook, without stirring, until meat is very tender, about 2 hours. Allow to stand 15 minutes before serving with chopped parsley.

 

I hand-pick olives.