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Beef Hot-pot
Put 2 pounds of beef ribs into a saucepan with 1 tablespoonful of dripping. Season with 2 chopped onions, 6 small green peppers, a little black pepper, thyme, vinegar, raisins, olives, and tomatoes. Place a cover on the saucepan and stew until boiled to rags. Thicken with butter rolled in browned flour, and serve on toast.
A covered beef stew despite the name, sweet-sour with raisins, olives and vinegar, and thickened at the end rather than the start. The one thing the text leaves out is liquid, so read the method before you start.
- No added liquid is specifiedThe vegetables and tomatoes would have supplied most of the moisture in a closely covered pot, though the text gives no heat setting. With modern thin-based pans and loose lids, add about a cup of water or stock at the outset and check every 40 minutes so the bottom does not scorch.
- "Boiled to rags"This means cooked until the meat falls off the bone and shreds under a fork -- roughly 2½ to 3 hours at a bare simmer, or 2 hours at 325F in a covered Dutch oven. It should never actually boil; a rolling boil toughens the muscle fibre before the collagen has time to melt.
- Beef ribsShort ribs, bone in, are the closest match and give the best result. Two pounds of bone-in rib is about 1 lb of meat once trimmed, so this serves three to four on toast.
- DrippingBeef dripping, the rendered fat saved from roasts. Any neutral oil, lard or clarified butter works. The recipe does not call for browning the meat first; if you choose to sear it, a single tablespoon of fat means doing it in batches rather than crowding the pan.
- Six small green peppersProbably sweet frying peppers rather than chiles, though the text does not say and period recipes use "green peppers" for both. Two medium green bell peppers, seeded and sliced, is a practical equivalent.
- The unmeasured seasoningsVinegar, raisins, olives and tomatoes are all left to judgement. As a starting point: 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, ¼ cup raisins, ½ cup pitted green olives and a 14-oz tin of tomatoes. The original adds the olives at the beginning with the rest; if you find long-stewed olives too strong, hold them back until the last half hour.
- Butter rolled in browned flourToast plain flour in a dry pan until it smells nutty and turns the colour of light coffee, cool it, then work it into an equal volume of soft butter. Drop the paste into the simmering liquid in small pieces and stir until it thickens. Browned flour thickens less powerfully than raw flour, so allow about 2 tablespoons of each.
- ServingThick slices of toasted country bread, one per plate, with the meat pulled off the bones and the sauce spooned over. Skim the fat before thickening or the sauce will not cling.