Rachael Ray In Tuscany Red Wine Beef Stew Over Polenta EP109

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i’ve worked all of my life to live in Italy we found this place and now this is our place and it means everything to me i love that Tuscan food it’s about basic ingredients and the quality of them it can take a long time there’s brazed meats there’s slowcooked ragu and sauces and things beef cooked in wine so we’re just crushing garlic slowcooked in red wine slowly add the palenta and at the end this is the exciting part and look at it it’s falling apart it’s gorgeous boom food is a conduit we make food to take us away to places we’ve never been and dream about going to you just need your imagination and a couple of bucks and you have a ticket to anywhere so come on over i love this place i hope you do too [Music] let me tell you about my wedding we had that night beef cooked in wine very common in Tuscanyany and they do it in different ways in different small regions or cities or villages tuscan food in general though is about the simplicity of the ingredients as few ingredients as possible and the best quality possible best quality of ingredients with the fewest ingredients this is stew beef a beef cooked also in red wine but the most inexpensive cuts that you can buy when I make one batch I’m cooking for a a crowd here and my husband so when we make one batch we use a couple of pounds two to three lbs and you can use chuck you can use shank beef shank or you can use ranch steak it’s a marbled fairly tough meat that you need to cook for a long time that’s another thing that’s very popular in Tuscanyany brazed meats you know slowcooked in liquid is all we’re talking about in this case the liquid is red wine my husband giggles cuz I nicknamed this wine cuckoo like a cuckoo clock it’s Mont Cukco which is a beautiful little tiny village and this was a gift this type of wine from our region was a gift from my uh friends Francesco and Samantha samantha actually found this wine and they gifted it to us i love it i cut the meat this is about uh 4 lb a little over 2 kilos cuz again cooking for a crowd and I cubed it into you know stew size pieces so it’s like an inch and a quarter inch and a half i don’t sit there and measure don’t be too uptight about your food when you cook up tight the food tastes like it see what I’m saying you have to cook chilled out so make a cup of tea have a glass of wine have whatever you need to chill out but don’t cook tight you got to cook loosey goosey garbage bowl i have my hand preheated this recipe is from Florence and I called it crazy easy or crazy stupid something like that uh crazy easy i think crazy easy stew because well it is here’s the elements the meat which you obviously see in front of your eyes and a whole lot of coarse black pepper like a lot there’s a whole jar from Labot my friends at Labot hi guys and girls i’m going to try and do it a little cooler cuz this is Italian marble this pessle so I’m trying to make it look a little cooler but I really just want to bash it okay I’ll be back in a second here just keep [Music] working i always have everything prepped that can be prepped put away produce clean put away uh garlic peeled put away onions peeled and change them out once a week instead of starting from scratch every night you’ll eat better food and you’ll cook more if you set yourself up for success and make less work every day that you can so we’re just crushing garlic for every 2 to three lbs which would be uh four to six people you’re going to want to do one whole bulb of garlic the only elements in this dish are traditionally black pepperc corn coarsely ground which we have a lot of the the good quality beef of course but it’s going to braise in that beautiful uh red wine and lots of garlic okay let’s get that wine open and we’ll get this into the pot we go the oven’s on the equivalent of 325 Fahrenheit i can’t give up my love of that sound it’s It’s very sassy sexy so we’re going to brown the meat first uh with lots of black pepper and with about a tablespoon for a a two to three lbs okay so one big chunk of stewing meat so we’re going to do that twice and then our pepper monstrous amounts of pepper but the pepper with the fruit flavors in the wine I mean it just gets really sexy in there now to road map this we’re going to thicken it up with one of two choices you can just add a little slurry of a bit of water and a touch of cornstarch or you can add some ve demiglass i use one of these they come in little individual containers it’s just a couple tablespoons right they sell them like this in the grocery store because we’re making a double batch I’m using [Music] two and we we use that later okay what we’re going to do is get the meat brown and line throw in our garlic and let that cook in the oven for a couple of hours [Music] okay what we’re going to do is get the meat browned and out our wine and then we’re going to throw in our garlic and let that cook in the oven for a couple of hours now if you’re only making one batch it’ll probably be done in closer to 90 minutes because you have much less meat than I’m cooking i have this on low but you know the pan’s been heating up for a while so it’s And it’s you know extravirgin olive oil this is ours from our ranch that’s a pretty low smoking point so we want to get this right in there to get those meat juices the meat itself caramelizing as quick as possible and don’t move it do not touch the meat until the meat is brown when it feels like it can pull away from the pan that’s when you can touch it now that’s all a person from Florence would put into that pot with the wine right just the meat and the pepperc corns the garlic has to go right before it goes in the oven so it doesn’t burn okay i like to add a little flourish to anything I do you want to give your food a little bit of your own personality i like juniper and rosemary with brazeds especially when you’re in Tuscany so I am going to do just that cuz it’s my kitchen we’re going to throw in couple of sprigs of rosemary and a few juniper leaves i mean juniper berries my husband and I both love juniper we use it in shingale sauce we use it in many brazed meat dishes we also use it in the gin that we created well I created I made I made a recipe for Jin that I think is pretty dang good most gin has juniper in it though um our gin is called staple gin so I always have juniper in our family pantry it’s around the house all the time all year long fun trick take two wine corks start them between your thumb and your index finger and then you have to change hands with one move watch that a few times i just messed you up okay guys now I am stirring in two ve demiglass again you could add just a little cornstarch slurry to thicken your sauce and what is the sauce with our black pepper easy to make tuskcin style beef it’s wine now I’m making double the recipe with the beef but you don’t need double the wine a bottle and a half is going to be fine per every 2 to three lbs you’re going to need one bottle but when we double recipes you have to use a little bit of your best judgment sometimes we don’t need to exactly double everything so good to know right now in the corners here this is called fond it’s the the juices that get stuck to the side of the pot a bit okay so we want to pick up all the flavor that we’ve built into that pot we’re going to add in all of our garlic we waited to do that so we wouldn’t singe the garlic and it’s going to slow cook as the braise happens again I’m cooking a lot of meat so this will probably take closer to 2 hours than 90 minutes but we’ll keep checking no big deal uh fun note so we’re just going to get the pot covered and shove it in the oven [Music] we’re going to make the palenta super healthy for you super tasty you can use any cornmeal there’s lots of palentas on your grocery store shelves and you just follow the package directions [Music] so this has been resting for about a half an hour and if you make the single amount of what I wrote for you guys okay it’ll probably be closer to 90 minutes this baby I did a double batch cuz we have a lot of folks here i’m not even going to uncover it yet there’s no need to we’re going to make the [Music] palenta the palenta that I use is uh something I buy online and it’s an actual mix of cornmeal and buckwheat super healthy for you super tasty but of course you can use instant palenta and it is instant it cooks in three minutes and you can buy it in any grocery store you can use any cornmeal like Bob’s uh you know Red Mill I love uh but there’s lots of palentas on your grocery store shelves and you just follow the package directions the difference I make is I always cook in layers of flavor so I don’t cook something naked or just in water i always cook in stock or bone broth or flavored water of some sort okay there’s no reason not to add flavor any place you can as long as you can afford to okay let’s pour in two quarts of stock for one bag okay of this beautiful 500 g so that means 1.1 lbs of this particular type of palenta why do I like this this particular type is cornmeal mixed with buckwheat i love the depth of flavor it’s a beautiful rich mix of flavors that buckwheat really adds a little anchor to the whole thing but this takes a little while this takes about 3540 minutes okay and whenever we make palenta we have to start with hot liquid once he gets hot then we can start combining everybody we can add the palenta to the liquid at the very end the big finish no I’m going to make you wait for the big finish whatever you can wait for the big finish [Music] so guys the beauty about brazed meat is that the longer it sets the better it gets what’s going on over here for every bag 500 g just over a pound of palenta I use two quarts of stock not water so we’re going to slowly add in circles so it isn’t a big pile at the bottom of the pan a bag of our palenta what is palenta ground cornmeal no big deal so the big finish is cheese and butter it’s essential you stir in when this is almost done we stir in butter this is a whole stick cuz it’s a whole pot of palenta okay and I like a combination you only need about a cup of cheese but I use more what a shock and I combine pecarino which is sheep’s milk and parmyo reaniano which of course is cow’s milk the king of all cheeses so we do a combo and then our garnish for the beef is just a little bit of grassy parsley that’s all it’s all it needs so the most exciting part of making palenta guys is when we add the butter and the cheese i use a palenta that’s made with buckwheat [Music] okay raising that photo [Music] just so the most exciting part of making palenta guys is when we add the butter and the cheese this is a really big deal it really is it’s the point of having palenta palenta again is cornmeal right that we cook out in my case in stock or in your case water or stock your choice or a mix of the two or stock and milk i use a palenta that’s made with buckwheat it has a depth of flavor that I absolutely love at the very end I put a paddle in the pot instead of a whisk that I’ve been working it through so that it doesn’t get too thick okay so for one bag or 500 g or about a pound of the actual palenta I cook it in two quarts of liquid again that’s your choice you can make it with milk and water milk and stock all stock all water okay but you need to add flavor so we need to season with a little salt i used pecorino and parmyo combined so that’s cow’s milk and sheep’s milk as we’ve talked about many times okay I mix that all together it’s perfection what we want with palenta is a pourable product you want something that’s going to ease into the dish and gently hug whatever you put on top of it okay I’m going to try I’m going to slide it over look I’m going to do like a shuffle like you’re going to a wedding dance oh there we go look at how artfully I did that i even dropped the spatula in there so this is the consistency you want woo we can pour that there you go we’re going to put the ladle into this fella choo choo so we had to turn the lid upside down to put the two large lid on the two small braer but there’s our beef and look at it it’s falling apart i can break it up with a paddle it’s gorgeous and it’s cooked just in wine and you can use the ve dummy glass like how how good does that smell okay now I’m just going to chop a little bit of grassy parsley to finish that with it’s simplicity itself it’s the most traditional it’s just beef cooked in wine with tons of black pepper everyone can do this there’s very few ingredients and it’s delicious in the end and there we go [Music]