The Sherry Thief's Stew

You don't want to waste that last packet of moose from the back of the freezer on a recipe that could go wrong, so don't.  Stick to the basics: moose, booze, berries, root vegetables, and a slow oven.

Sherried Moose Stew

2 tbsp bacon fat

Moose, berries and jelly from the wild.  Root vegetables
are about the only local veg available this time of year,
but still in great shape.

4 cups* moose meat, whatever cut is left in the freezer, thawed, cut into stewing chunks
2 tbsp unbleached all purpose flour
3 shallots, finely chopped
a few sprigs of thyme, dug out from under the snow (or perhaps growing or hanging to dry in your kitchen window because you are smarter than we are)
1 bay leaf
5 black peppercorns
5 parsnips, cut in half lengthwise then sliced

The sweet from the sherry and apple jelly, and the tart of the
cranberries are simple ways to add depth.

3 carrots, prepare 2 of these like the parsnips and divvy the third one up amongst your dogs
4 cloves crushed garlic
1/2 c. sweet sherry, stolen from that nice British lady down the street**
1/4 c. apple jelly (or use red currant or rose hip)
3 c. water
1/2 c. frozen wild cranberries

*Fefe would normally weigh this for you but someone (someone of the feline variety for sure, never ever someone of the caribougrrl variety), broke the scale by dropping it pushing it off the counter
**in this case, Fefe's mother... she also might have known we were taking it, but we haven't yet returned the remainder of the bottle so it still counts as stolen...

Comfort Cove parsnips for comfort food.

Preheat oven to 325F.

In a large cast iron dutch oven over medium heat, melt the bacon fat.  Season moose with salt and pepper and toss with flour.  Brown moose, in batches if necessary, and set aside.

Add a bit more bacon fat if needed to saute shallots, thyme, bay leaf and peppercorns in moose juice for about 5 minutes.  Add parsnips, carrots and garlic, stirring regularly for 10 minutes.  Don't let the garlic burn: adjust your heat and/or fat as necessary.

Deglaze with sherry.  Add jelly, browned moose, water and cranberries to the pot.  Bring to a simmery-boil, stirring occasionally.  Don't worry about hunks of jelly, these will meld into the stew before you eat it.

Put lid on the dutch oven and transfer to oven.  Check every 45 minutes or so to make sure there's sufficient liquid; add more water if you need it.  Cook for 2 hours (or more or less; test the moose with a fork for doneness every once in a while... it's done when the moose is tender and the liquid is thickened).

We served it with roasted turnip (rutabaga, swede).  

~~~

Fefe made this stew during the last major deep freeze.
 

It's difficult to gauge the weather by looking outside... 

So cold, the dishwasher has been clogged with ice nearly every morning.

Our thyme, when we can find it, is holding up rather well despite the winter.

So cold, the cats have taken to sleeping under the covers.

Not only were there cats under the covers, but they refused to get out of bed.

So cold, we are supplying our neighbours with water via garden hose, because they forgot, just one night, to leave a drip and the wait list for water line repairs is weeks long.

So cold, the frost is clawing at the windows to get in.

Okay, maybe the windows hint at the weather outside even if you can't see it.

So cold, the only way to keep the kitchen warm is with the baseboard heaters and the oven.  So cold, we need a low and slow cooked meal. 

Raid your freezer, your root cellar, your pantry, your liquor cabinet... do whatever you have to do to minimize the time you spend out in the bitter cold.  Steal sherry from your mom mum if it means you can avoid a trip to the store.

I got up for this?

(In the interest of full disclosure, as I'm typing, it's raining outside -- such is March, or perhaps such is Newfoundland -- but guaranteed we've got some more too-cold-to-eat-salad weather to get through.  Perhaps the most comforting of comfort foods, a slightly sweet moose stew, can get us through.)

A Glut of Feral Apples

Due to caribougrrl's inability to walk past an apple tree without picking some, things have gotten out of hand.  In an attempt to clear the dining table to accommodate some dinner guests tomorrow, Fefe Noir spent some time putting them up.  She thinks this will also reduce the number of little apples the cats liberate and re-purpose as toys.

A small portion of the feral apples littering the house, and the borrowed cute little ancient British apple corer.

Dried Apple Rings

Keep apples handy by washing them in a bowl near your
work area.  Once cored and sliced, drop immediately into
lemon water.

feral apples*, **

juice of one lemon

*the number or weight of apples you need depends on how much room you can make in your oven

** you could use cultivated apples if that's what you can get

Start by digging all your wire cooling racks out of your cupboards and finding baking sheets they can sit on steadily (the little legs are not precariously balanced on rims; the legs either sit properly on the baking sheet or fully overhang it).  Once you've got racks and trays matched up, sort out how many will fit in your oven.

Preheat oven to 150F.

Fill a mixing bowl 3/4 full of water and add the lemon juice.

Make a guess at how many apples it will take to fill the space on your wire racks with round slices.  Wash that many.

Dry the apples one at a time.  Using an apple-corer, core the apples.  If you don't have an apple corer, beg borrow or buy one.  Since feral apples are tiny, Fefe borrowed her mother's ancient British apple-corer which is narrower than the ones generally available for sale in North America these days.

Slice the apples fairly thinly (but most importantly, slice them fairly evenly) into rings.  Drop the rings in the water and keep coring and slicing.  Reserve the cores and uneven ends and apples with bad spots (cut the bad spots out for your compost bin, put the rest of the apple aside with the cores) for making apple jelly (see below).

When you think you have enough, lay them out in a single layer on the wire racks.  If you didn't slice enough, do a few more.  If you sliced too many, put the extra aside with the cores for apple jelly.

Lay out in a single layer on the wire rack.

Dehydrate in oven for 2.5 to 4.5 hours.  Check them once in a while.  If you sliced them thickly, they will take a long time.  If you sliced them very very thinly, you will get apple chips.  Take them out when they are dry and shrunken and the consistency you were aiming for (you will have to bite into one to check).  If your apples are very juicy, they will take longer than if they are dry-ish.

If you are reluctant to give up oven space, or you oven is too small, there is good news:  you can dehydrate apples in your car!  (Provided you live in a sunnier place than Newfoundland)

Feral Apple Jelly

Following Marguerite Patten's 500 Recipes: Jams Pickles Chutneys (yikes!  see if you can borrow it from your local library or find it at a yard sale)

Use the scraps from your dried apple project and top  up
with additional apples as needed for the jelly.

feral apples*, including scraps from apple rings (see above)

water

sugar

*or crabapples, or cultivated apples

Using as many apples as you want to or need to (but a minimum of 2 lbs).  Wash the apples if they've been exposed to pesticides or road side dust or if you will feel better having washed them.  Cut the big ones in half or quarters, leave the tiny ones whole.  

Put the apples into a large saucepan.  Add 1 cup of water per pound of fruit.  Simmer the apples until they are pulpy.  Watch them fairly closely and stir once in a while so you don't burn them.  Fefe's took about an hour but that can change depending on the total volume in the pot, how vigorous a simmer you have, the variety of apple, the growing conditions this year, etc.  So watch them.  So while you are waiting, do things that keep you close to the kitchen... for one thing, set up your jelly bag or muslin or other drip system.

Fefe Noir stole caribougrrl's beside table and
turned it over to set up the cheese cloth for
the jelly drip.

To strain the jelly, Fefe used a double layer of cheesecloth suspended from an upturned side table (see photo) and placed a large mixing bowl underneath.  Once the cheesecloth is securely tied, and the apples are fully cooked, transfer the stewed apple and all the liquid into the strainer by adding one ladle-full at a time. Leave overnight to strain.

Do not squeeze the cheesecloth.  You will be tempted to, because there will be a slightly disappointing amount of precious liquid in the bowl in the morning but do. not. squeeze.  This is jelly, not jam.  Sure, it will only make a little bit, but that's okay because if you have too much you will get tired of it anyway.

Use the liquid for the jelly and run the pulp through a food mill or push it through a sieve to remove skin, seed, stems, etc.  There's a lot of goodness still left in that pulp, so if you won't be needing it immediately (for baked good or desserts, ketchup or other sauce), it can be frozen for a short period until ready for use.  

Measure the liquid and put it in a heavy bottomed saucepan.  Add 1/2 lb sugar for each cup of liquid. Stir to combine and heat to dissolve.  Bring to a rapid boil and watch constantly, boiling until set.  There is a lot of pectin in apple jelly so it will set quickly, keep a cold plate handy for checking the set frequently.  Fefe's took about 10 minutes.  She also suggests that you don't start unloading the dishwasher because if you're distracted, your jelly might boil over or burn and the smoke detector may go off upsetting the dogs and creating mayhem as apple jelly shellac adheres to the surface of your stove.  Hypothetically, that is.

Pour into sterilized jars leaving some air space at the top.  If you are planning to store the jelly, heat process appropriate for your altitude and take the usual precaution of refrigerating any unsealed jars and using quickly.  We're practically at sea level and Fefe Noir processed ours for 10 minutes.

~~~

The Madonna cat is obsessed with the feral apples.   As it turns out, they make great cat toys (so long as you don't mind apples rotting under your sideboard...).