[Sca-cooks] "Too-much-cornstarch, " was - Re: Pennsic - meals, etc - sorta OT

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Saturday, July 5, 2003, at 04:01  PM, Rosine wrote:

> The beef stew can range from almost-mom-made to
> horrid "too much cornstarch" glue - it's hard to judge, but I've only 
> had
> the horrid once in four years or so. Late late night seemed to be the 
> "too
> much cornstarch" time - probably trying to stretch things until closing
> time. You have plenty of time to see what folks ahead of you are 
> walking
> away with. When the stew's good - it's good.

One of the things I used to do for a living (in fact, my first job out 
of cooking school) was make largish pots, maybe 24 quarts at a time, of 
some chef's (I forget her name) version of Daube Provencale.

It always seemed to be velvety and never gluey, even at the end of the 
night.

Part of the process involved thickening with flour (cornstarch isn't 
commonly used in this way in bulk food service as it is fairly 
unstable, and can suddenly lose its thickening power under certain 
circumstances, and its more stable cousin, waxy maize, is relatively 
expensive and seems to be mostly used for frozen foods). What we did 
was:

Brown the meat in olive oil (I assume some other fat, as long as you 
don't burn the fat, would work). We did it all at once, just stirring 
frequently over high heat. We would then sprinkle on the meat enough 
flour (ordinary all-purpose white flour) to cover the meat evenly. Just 
keep adding it until almost all of it adheres to the meat (stirring). 
Stop adding it when no more will stick. It'll look like not quite 
enough flour. It also won't look like it would make a smooth sauce, but 
it does. Continue to brown the now floured meat until the flour is 
brown. Some juice from the meat will soak into the flour and make gluey 
lumps. Ignore them. We also threw in lots of sliced mushrooms at this 
stage, and, I think, some peeled tomato wedges. These should be 
considered optional.

Add liquid to cover. We used all red wine, but stock, ale, or water or 
some mixture would probably work. The acid in the wine seems to have 
had a good effect on the sauce and the tenderness of the meat.

Boil, skim, then reduce heat and simmer until meat is tender; time will 
depend on the cut and size of the chunks. Secret ingredient: about 2-6 
whole heads of garlic (depending on the size of the pot). Whole. Do not 
peel, do not break apart cloves.

When the meat was tender, we would remove the heads of garlic and put 
them in a food mill over the stewpot, and puree the heads of garlic 
into the sauce as additional thickener. The mill keeps the peelings and 
stems out of the pot. It would be just barely thick enough at this 
point, normally, but the garlic puree was just enough to make it 
perfect, and it didn't seem to thicken a lot over time, as many 
starch-thickened sauces do.

Just in case anybody needs to know this stuff...

Adamantius