Cooking Beef Stew, Italian-American Style, With Dumplings

We feel grateful we have lazy Sundays every once in a while. We work on what we can handle for the day, and we look forward to days when can do some unhurried, honest to goodness homestyle cooking. My roommates, including our landlord, and myself decided we’d like to have a stew for today. We gathered what we have got in the kitchen, and started making the stew. Here’s how I figured how the recipe was for what we have eventually come up for our main dish for the day:

2lbs beef cubes, cut into bite sizes
1 and ½ cups of olive oil
½ lbs all purpose flour
3 large size white onions (sweet variety), cut & diced
4 long stems of celery, cut & diced
2 lbs of peeled carrots, cut into bite sizes
10 medium sized potatoes, peeled, cut into bite sizes
1 can of peeled tomato with basil (1 lb)
Parsly flakes
15 beef bouillons
1 & ½ cups pancake & baking mix to make dumplings
1 cup of milk
1 can of mixed greenpeas
A very big cooking pot

Dump the beef cubes in flour, making sure they’re all coated very well (this will help thickened your stew, and not turn it into a soup). Pour olive oil in the pot, let it grow hot for 3 minutes. Put the floured beef cubes into the pot, and stir it occasionally until the beef have turned medium brown. Put in next the onions and the celery. Stir, until everything has been mixed well for the next 10 minutes. Add in water to the mixture up to more than half level of your pot (the idea is to have at least the mixture get more than double in proportion with the water, but don’t add too much water as this will turn the stew into a soup). Add the peeled tomato. Let it boil, and stir occasionally for the next 45 minutes to 1 hour under slow, medium fire --- you will lose at least 1/3 of the water after this period.

Next add the carrots followed by the potatoes. Stir occasionally. Add parsly flakes (this will help offset the taste of the onions). Let the mixture boil under slow fire for the next 30 to 45 minutes.

Then proceed to prepare the dumplings. Add milk to the mix; stir the ingredients until soft dough forms. Plop the mixture to the pot using a tablespoon. Reduce heat. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes. Add in the greenpeas, and stir.

Good for 10 people (or you may just refrigerate whatever is leftover).