A Stew Boiled is a Stew Spoiled

I wasn’t sure how I was going to follow up yesterday’s recipe but since it is cold and sleeting I’ve got to go with some hearty stew.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to go to the home of a chef where she went over the basics of a good stew. You need a meat, vegetable, and fruit. Confused? Let me share my recipe for Italian Pork Stew and then I’ll explain how to adapt it to other ingredients that you may have on hand.

Italian Pork & Vegetable Stew (12 servings)
3-4 lbs Boston butt or Pork Shoulder, cut into chunks
1 fennel bulb (or 3 ribs celery)
1 ½ TBSP fennel seed, roasted & coarsely ground *
3 onions cut into 1/8ths
3 lg carrots, sliced diagonally
1 ½ -2 cups prunes, pitted
1 bulb garlic, peeled **
2 cups (1 can) chicken broth
1 bottle merlot or cabernet or other red wine
1 can stewed tomatoes w/juice
Olive oil
Kosher salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

Place a little olive oil in a frying pan and heat. Add meat to HOT pan to brown. Brown in batches and be sure that you don’t over crowd the pan. Place meat in oven roasting pan. Sauté onion. Add fennel (celery if used) and carrot. Sauté enough to coat vegetables with a little oil. Add to roasting pan with meat. Add garlic, chicken broth, wine, prunes (I chop mine up), and tomatoes (broken up). Salt & pepper to taste. Stir. Cover roaster and simmer in 350-375 oven for 2 ½ to 3 hours or until meat is fork tender.

*Toast fennel in dry pan until lightly browned. Coarsely grind in a grinder or mortar and pestle.
**Garlic comes out of peel easily if you microwave for about 20-30 seconds. Squeeze base and the bulbs pop right out!

Nutrition Facts
Serving size 1 ½ cups
Calories 569
Total Fat 27.9 g
Saturated Fat 9.4 g
Trans Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 144 mg
Sodium 260 mg
Carbohydrates 23.6 g
Dietary Fiber 3.7 g
Protein 41.2 g
Vitamin A 59% Vitamin C 17%
Calcium 11 % Iron 18%
Nutrition Grade C

Okay, this is the basic recipe. By making a few simple substitutions I can reduce the calories and fat dramatically, plus up the nutrition grade to a B-. I would change from the pork to a beef roast and change the prunes to dried cranberries. This brings the calories to 406, Fat to 12 g, and for low carbers, carbs to 8 net carbs! You can play with this recipe to your own tastes. Substitute any cut of meat, dried fruit, wine, vegetables. I usually throw in what vegetables I have on hand or that look good in the produce section. Celery can replace the fennel. Add in extra carrots. Same with the dried fruit. I've used dried mixed fruit, dried cherries, blueberries, or craisans. Serve over some baked potatoes or alone. Throw this together in the morning in a crock pot and come home to a yummy, hearty meal. Or make this on the weekend and you have several great leftovers. The longer the flavors blend the better. If you want to check what your substitutions have done to the nutrition analysis plug the ingredients into the calculator at http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php?process=resubmit&count=30 .