Pots of hearty goodness

BANISH THE WINTER BLUES WITH THESE SOUL-WARMING STEWS

Stew has been part of food history for millennia, crossing cultures and sustaining princes and paupers alike. And while making a pot of stew does take a little bit of time, there’s nothing like seeing a bowl of hearty goodness on the dinner table.

It nourishes our bodies and warms our souls simultaneously.

One of the first mentions of stew is found in the oldest cookbook known to man: the Apicius, or de re Coquinaria (“On the Subject of Cooking”).

The Apicius is a collection of Roman recipes dating from the first century AD. It includes recipes for making succulent stews.

In Book III, “The Gardener”, mention is made of a pumpkin stew made with broth and pure oil, while Book IV was purely for cooking quadrupeds. It is in this chapter that we, with our slow cookers, would feel at home.

DIFFERENT MEATS

Roman cooks included exotic ingredients used to develop the flavour of venison, wild goat, kid, gazelle, hare and mountain sheep. A lamb recipe calls for pieces of kid in a pot with chopped onion and coriander. A recipe for mountain sheep instructs cooks to add stewed Damascus prunes, lovage, raisin wine, broth and “a whip of origany”.

Our Irish lamb chop stew would rival Apicius’ version.

Hygiene practices included separating the meat from the sauce and eliminating the impurities. This trick was practised everywhere, from the rocket and masonry stoves of the ancient world to modern-day brushed steel appliances and results in a nourishing bowl of goodness.

DEVELOPING FLAVOUR

Stewing techniques using protein, herbs and slow-cooking were also common across food history. The Greek historian Herodotus observed a Scythian cooking technique whereby one placed “the flesh into an animal’s paunch … and boil(ed) it like that over the bone fire”.

And a 4000-year-old Babylonian stew recipe, written in cuneiform, reflects the same mix of meat, herbs and broth we see from Roman times.

Thankfully, these days we don’t need to boil our preferred protein in an animal’s paunch.

We have slow cookers to modernise the cooking process and earthenware tagine pots to help simmer the stew and keep it warm.