Stew

Choose any or all of the toppers for your chili.

I’m always trying to come up with yet another version of chili and yet another chicken dinner. Here’s both in one meal in another new way.

I loved and still miss Julia Child. She consumed life as robustly as she did a good, crispy skinned chicken. If I had ever had her over for lunch, I would have made her this simple stew.

I know, I know, you’re exhausted. Well, let me tell you, this stew is easy to make, is good for you, and has a big satisfying flavor. You’ll be slurping away in front of the TV before you know it . . . and then you can go to bed, early, like your mom always said you should.

A stoup is thicker than soup and thinner than stew.

Food Network is located at Chelsea Market, in Manhattan. The Lobster Place is a great seafood shop within this huge market. I made up this meal one night during a run of taping for 30-Minute Meals. I stopped into the market and took home pure white scrod, some tiny Manila clams, and a little pack of saffron powder as my inspiration. It was so delish that John and I ate it three nights in ten, sharing it with family and friends two of those evenings as the simplest, tastiest way we could think to entertain a crowd. Whether you’re feeding one or some, make a whole pot of this stoup (thicker than soup, thinner than stew), as the leftovers get even better!

This stoup is a one-pot Swedish meatballs and egg noodle supper, but soupier!

When it comes to this one-pot wonder, even Campbell’s never made it this good! Use a large, deep-sided skillet or medium soup pot for this recipe.

Here’s another example of “stoup”; a meal in a bowl that’s thicker than soup, thinner than stew.

Stoup is what I call a meal that serves up thicker than a soup yet thinner than a stew. This hearty hunter’s chicken stoup is a family favorite of ours, especially on chilly nights.

A Römertopf, a porous clay pot developed in the 1960s by a German company, is often used in Alsace and southern Germany for long- simmering stews. These stews may be akin to Alsatian baeckeoffe, a pot of meat (usually beef, pork, and veal along with calf or pig feet) mixed with potatoes, marinated in white wine, and cooked in the oven all day long, on Mondays, when the women traditionally do the wash. Agar Lippmann (see page 258) remembers her mother in Alsace making the Sabbath stew in a baeckeoffe, using a mix of flour and water to make a kind of glue to really seal the lid. When I was having lunch at Robert and Evelyne Moos’s house in Annecy, they used a Römertopf to make a similar lamb stew for me. Eveline ceremoniously brought the dish to the table, and in front of all of us, took off the top so that we were enveloped in the steam and aromas of the finished dish.

While I was having lunch at Au Rendez-vous/La Maison de Couscous in Paris (see page 112), the owner brought out some of the magnificent Tunisian Sabbath stew he was cooking for that evening. It was made with a special North African kind of wheat berries, meat, a large amount of oil, onions, and a mixture of coriander, caraway, and harissa, the spice combination of peppers and garlic. This is certainly a later variation of the thirteenth-century recipe for orisa, a famous nutritious porridge brimming with soaked wheat berries, chickpeas, pounded meat, melted mutton fat, and cinnamon, found in the Manuscrito Anonimo, an Arabic-language Andalusian cookbook. Among the Jews of Tangier it was a simple meatless dish consisting of crushed wheat spiced with red pepper. I have made a vegetarian version that can accompany any meat dish or be served alone.