Welcome back to “The Kid Stays in the Kitchen.” Each week throughout the semester, a student is assigned to cook a traditional dish with a friend or family member and document the experience in photos and words.  This post features Sam who teams up with his grandma Joanie to make his favorite: beef stew.

I chose to cook beef stew with my Grandma Joanie because it is one of my favorite meals and because it is something which my grandma has been cooking and serving for as long as I can remember. She knows that my mom, dad, sister and I like it so much, that when my mom goes to visit her, she will send back home frozen containers of the stew.  And anytime she asks to cook it our response is always a resounding yes!  We often share it Friday nights when my family can all sit down at the table and eat together. My great-grandparents are from Russia and Romania and my grandma started making it because her family made brisket and she wanted to improve the dish. It is a favorite meal for a two reasons:  I can never turn down a hearty meal, especially one filled with meat and potatoes and secondly, it only gets better in the following days.  It’s the meal that keeps on giving!”

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 4lbs cubed chuck
• 1 – 2  large onions, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 fresh bay leaf
• 6 carrots, peeled and cut into rounds
• 4 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon of organic beef base
• 2 1/2 cups of water
• 1 tablespoon of sea-salt and ground black pepper
• Olive oil
• 10 red bliss potatoes

Equipment other than knife, cutting board, etc.

• Heavy duty Skillet
• Cast iron porcelain lined pot with cover

Directions

1. Trim excess fat from beef cubes

2. Heat heavy duty skillet.

3. Place small batches of beef into pan to brown.

4. Brown meat on all sides.

5. Remove from pan and place into heavy duty pot; add salt and pepper.

6. Add one cup of water to pan and scrape brownings from bottom of pan.  Pour into the pot with meat.

8. Peel carrots and cut them into bite size rounds.  Place them into a separate bowl.

11. Peel and chop onions.

12. Heat up pan and put in oil.

13. Add onions.

14. Once translucent, add celery and salt and pepper to taste.

15. Add minced garlic and cook for a few minutes.

16. Take vegetable mix off heat and add to big pot.

17. Add about 1 1/2 cups of water to pan for drippings and add carrots to stew pot.

19. Cover on medium high heat.

20. Wash potatoes.

21. Slice potatoes to ½ inch thickness with skin on.

22. Mix into stew.

23. Add soy sauce, beef base, and bay leaf.

24. Stir and cover with lid.

25. Stew for 2-3 hours on low heat or until meat is tender.

Welcome back to “The Kid Stays in the Kitchen.” Each week throughout the semester, a student is assigned to cook a traditional dish with a friend or family member and document the experience in photos and words.  This post features Emilie who made rice pudding with her close family friend, Lidia.

Having a very large family, we are lucky that we always want to get together as much as possible.  We are all very close! I come from a Dominican family, and when we spend time together, it is usually more than 30 people crammed into my grandma’s tiny apartment, with her tiny little Yorkie yelping at us for some human food. My grandma is usually in the kitchen with her closest friends, Lidia and China, cooking all of the rich and fatty Hispanic foods you can think of such as pernil (pork shoulder) or moro (rice and beans).  After we’ve all had dinner, we eat arroz con leche, also known as rice pudding, made by Lidia. I love how sweet it is, and in particular I love its texture. It is so creamy and warm, served as soon as it is done cooking, and this particular version is very dense and thick. Its smell always brings me back to moments when my mom used to cook it for me when I was sick. It was my favorite food, and still is one of my favorites. Although my mother’s rice pudding recipe is pretty good, I have never tried any rice pudding better than Lidia’s.”                                                                                                                                                            – Emilie

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 8 cups of water
• 3 ½ cups of white rice
• 7 cinnamon sticks
• 1 lime’s skin peeled
• 24 fluid ounces of evaporated milk
• 14 fluid ounces of condensed milk
• 3 cups of organic cane sugar
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• (optional) ground cinnamon for finish

Servings: 40

Instructions:

1.     Add the water, cinnamon sticks, and lime peel into a pot. Heat until the water starts to boil.

2.     Pour the rice into the boiling water and cook for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally.

3.     While the rice is cooking, add the evaporated milk, salt, vanilla extract, and sugar into another pot and cook for about 30 minutes.

4.     Pour the milky mixture into the rice pot and cook it for 20-25 more minutes, stirring occasionally.

5.     Pour the condensed milk into the mixture, cooking it for about 10 more minutes.

Then, it’s ready to eat! Sprinkle some ground cinnamon over the rice pudding for more flavor.