Catalan Beef Stew

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Summary

Yield
Source

Catalan Cuisine, pg. 257

Prep time3 1⁄2 hours
Flavorsbeef potatoes cinnamon Catalan chocolate sherry Spanish
MealtimeSoup

Description

From the super fabulous Catalan Cuisine cookbook that I picked up on a recent trip to Barcelona. Chocolate and cinnamon plus meat are unfamiliar combos for me, but I was quite pleased with how this turned out.

Estofat de Bou would be the Catalan name for this dish. 

Ingredients

Instructions

Cook the bacon until it starts to turn golden brown, then remove it from the fat. Brown the stewing beef in the bacon fat until lightly browned all over, then put the bacon back in and deglaze with the sherry.

Mix in the onions, garlic, herbs, and flour, then add 2 cups of water and salt and pepper as needed. Let simmer covered for 2 1/2 hours.

After simmering, add the chocolate, cinnamon, and the cubed potatoes. Bring the mixture back to simmer and then cover for 1/2 hour, or until the potatoes are soft (they shouldn't be mushy). 

Serve garnished with fried botifarra sausage slices. 

Notes

For the chocolate, xocolata a la pedra is what is requested (which pg 35 in Catalan Cuisine says that this chocolate "usually contain[s] rice flour and cinnamon in addition to cacao and some sugar") -- I ended up buying Toblerone with almonds, which seemed to work quite well: not too sweet, but enough non-chocolate type ingredients to get close to what was asked for.

Average: 5 (1 vote)