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Quick Vegetable Stew
Fry 1 sliced onion slowly until tender and lightly browned. Add 1 cup canned tomatoes, and simmer together. Add only sufficient hot water to cook vegetables, flavor with a beef cube, some meat gravy or liquid in which other vegetables have been cooked; season. Meanwhile prepare the vegetables, or get them out of can, a good assortment being: a dozen string beans or a handful of shelled limas or green peas; 2 carrots sliced; 1 small turnip, cut into eights; and squash in 11/2-inch cubes. Have the liquid at the boiling point and commence cooking in it the beans or peas, since these require the longest time. After 10-15 minutes add carrots and turnip; after 15-20 minutes add the squash, and cook 15 minutes. The cover of the saucepan should remain tilted throughout so that the temperature does not rise too high, and at the end there should be just enough liquid to form a gravy. Half a cup of sweet 0 corn scraped from the ear, or a scalded green pepper cut in strips, will add extra quality, but neither of these should cook more than 5 minutes.
A camp stew built on staged timing rather than a fixed recipe, meant to be cooked over a single burner or a bed of coals. The whole method hinges on adding vegetables in order of how long they take, so the last thing in is still bright when the first thing is tender.
- The hinge: staggered additionsEverything goes into liquid already at a boil, longest-cooking vegetables first. If you dump it all in at once the beans will still be squeaky when the squash has collapsed.
- The tilted lidPropping the cover keeps the pot at a bare simmer and lets steam escape so the liquid reduces to just enough to form a gravy, as the recipe says. On a modern hob, set the burner low and leave the lid ajar.
- Beef cubeUse one cube or a teaspoon of paste for the small amount of liquid here, and hold back on salt until the end.
- SquashSummer squash or zucchini in 1½-inch cubes cooks in the 15 minutes given. Winter squash of the same size needs longer, so cut it smaller or add it with the carrots.
- Canned tomatoesOne cup of canned tomatoes means the tomatoes with their juice, roughly half a standard 14.5 oz tin. Crush them as they go in.
- Timings run longFifteen to twenty minutes for sliced carrots and eighths of turnip before the squash goes in is generous; on a steady burner, check at ten. Note that the beans or peas, added first, stay in for the whole sequence.
- Corn and pepperFive minutes is right for fresh corn scraped from the cob. Frozen kernels need two or three, added at the very end.
- YieldNo yield is given; the quantities suggest something like three to four as a main course. It doubles in a larger pot, but keep the same order of additions.
Cookery of this period worked from a mixed larder of fresh and canned goods, and this stew shows the compromise plainly: canned tomatoes and a beef cube for the base, whatever vegetables were to hand or carried in tins for the body. The instruction to use the liquid in which other vegetables have been cooked reflects ordinary kitchen thrift. The tilted lid is a way of regulating the boil by letting steam out rather than by adjusting the heat.