Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Come and Get It: Hawaiian, Irish and Mexican Delights


This beef, carrot and pineapple stew is from a Del Monte promotional booklet issued for its canned pineapple product. The title of the booklet: Luau Favorites and Island Recipes. I believe it dates to the 1970s.

One lb beef sirloin cut into thin strips
2T salad oil
½ cup diced onion
1 clove crushed garlic
1t salt
1/8t pepper
1 can pineapple chunks
1 cup beef bouillon
¾ cup sliced carrots
½ cup diced green pepper
½ cup reserved pineapple syrup
2T cornstarch
2T soy sauce

   Saute beef in hot oil, remove from pan. Add onion, garlic, salt and pepper, cook for two minutes. Drain pineapple, reserve syrup. Add pineapple, bouillon, carrots and green pepper, cook five minutes, add meat. Dissolve cornstarch in soy sauce and reserved syrup, add to meat and vegetables. Cook, stirring constantly, until
thick and translucent (ed. note: a word usually applied to onions before they brown).

The Mexican entry here is called Carne Guisada. It seems generally agreed that Guisada means stew, though I have seen it translated as gravy.
   In a bowl this “stew” is good with a heaping dollop of rice in the center -- but it is often presented as taco filling.
   A writer for Texas Monthly tells how a batch disappeared, eaten “all by itself, mixed with eggs, atop fresh-made grits, and, of course, wrapped in fluffy flour tortillas and showered with yellow cheese.”
   Carne Guisada is a simple dish. Generally it involves beef. Some cooks use pork, some chicken.  Here is how it is made at Allrecipes site.
   The term comes from the Portuguese and is quite a different dish, as this recipe from the Décor and Dine blog illustrates. 

There is a bit of a problem with Pearl Barley Stew with Alsace Bacon as offered by Irish Times newspaper. You will probably have to go to France, or at least the British Isles, to find Alsace bacon. So it seems a more available smoked bacon must be substituted.

Barley, by the way, is considered an underappreciated super-food. Hulled barley is said to be more nutritious than pearl barley, which cooks faster. 


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