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multipurposegoddessI ran into several problems with this one. First off, I couldn't find any suet (um, edible by humans suet, I do have suet logs for the birds but I'm certainly not going to use that to make dumplings, ew). Granted, I didn't look super hard, but it wasn't readily available, so what I made were not suet dumplings, obviously. I used frozen goose fat, because I had that on hand and it generally makes for yummy pastry. I do have some beef tallow, but it's just fat that I recovered from making beef stock and then rendered. I have it in my head that proper suet is a nice firm white fat and the goose fat fit that image better. I do think the melting points are different, so I'm sure my results are not quite right.
I decided to do my grocery shopping this week by having Safeway deliver to me. I did this a couple of times when we lived in Benicia and only had one car (and had to carry everything from the car down a flight of steps to the front door anyway) and I had it in my head from back then that I would need to order several days ahead of when I wanted the groceries, which I am not planny enough to do. However, when I looked into it last week I discovered that next day delivery, or even same day if you order early enough, is an option. There is a delivery fee, but as I'm sure i have mentioned grocery shopping is a chore I am especially bad at. So I tried it out and was able to get almost everything on my shopping list. I ended up with 5 lbs of soup bones rater than the 3 I intended to get, but I figure extra bones in the stock is unlikely to be a bad thing, and Walter got a piece of bone all to himself, a rare treat. I couldn't tell from the site if the oysters were shucked or in shells, and the recipe called for 20-25 oysters, to make about a cup (including liqueur) when shucked, and I wasn't sure how to get that many when I was ordering in 10 oz quantities, so I ordered three. They turned out to be shucked, which is good because I am not really good at shucking oysters. I opened the first bottle and counted out 6 oysters, which made about a cup. Hm.
I decided to put in two bottles, so half as many as the recipe called for in numbers, but twice as much by volume. In other words, wrong no matter how you look at it, but both too much and not enough so on average maybe approaching right in some way. Now that I have had a couple of servings, I think one botte would have been fine and I should just know for future reference that Jolly Roger oysters are apparently enormous. Extra oystery beef and oyster stew is not bad, just extra oystery. In any case, now I have an extra 10 oz of oysters to fry, or make into oyster-stew-without-beef, or freeze. I forgot when I decided this was the September recipe to attempt that I have plans to go eat oysters pretty soon, it is turning out to be a fortnight of much oyster consumption.
Anyway, the stew is pretty good, more liquidy than I like but that seems to be true of all stews that I actually follow a recipe for rather than just throwing together by eye, but tasty. The dumpling batter also turned out thinner than I think it ought to have been, but cooked up pretty nicely - it's a light and fragile dumpling that soaks up the gravy quite well. As a whole, doesn't make for great leftovers just because the dumplings break up when they are cold (maybe if I had dished it all into separate servings while it was stil hot it would work better, but, since I forgot that the beef would need to stew for two hours and therefore didn't eat until 10 pm, shoving the whole thing into the fridge was the best I could do) and I feel iffy about reheating oysters in general, although the bowl I microwaved for lunch did not bear out any of my nebulous worries. It's a bit on the hearty side for as hot as the weather still is, but I would try it again in the winter, especially if I can track down some suet and figure out how to scale the recipe down.
I decided to do my grocery shopping this week by having Safeway deliver to me. I did this a couple of times when we lived in Benicia and only had one car (and had to carry everything from the car down a flight of steps to the front door anyway) and I had it in my head from back then that I would need to order several days ahead of when I wanted the groceries, which I am not planny enough to do. However, when I looked into it last week I discovered that next day delivery, or even same day if you order early enough, is an option. There is a delivery fee, but as I'm sure i have mentioned grocery shopping is a chore I am especially bad at. So I tried it out and was able to get almost everything on my shopping list. I ended up with 5 lbs of soup bones rater than the 3 I intended to get, but I figure extra bones in the stock is unlikely to be a bad thing, and Walter got a piece of bone all to himself, a rare treat. I couldn't tell from the site if the oysters were shucked or in shells, and the recipe called for 20-25 oysters, to make about a cup (including liqueur) when shucked, and I wasn't sure how to get that many when I was ordering in 10 oz quantities, so I ordered three. They turned out to be shucked, which is good because I am not really good at shucking oysters. I opened the first bottle and counted out 6 oysters, which made about a cup. Hm.
I decided to put in two bottles, so half as many as the recipe called for in numbers, but twice as much by volume. In other words, wrong no matter how you look at it, but both too much and not enough so on average maybe approaching right in some way. Now that I have had a couple of servings, I think one botte would have been fine and I should just know for future reference that Jolly Roger oysters are apparently enormous. Extra oystery beef and oyster stew is not bad, just extra oystery. In any case, now I have an extra 10 oz of oysters to fry, or make into oyster-stew-without-beef, or freeze. I forgot when I decided this was the September recipe to attempt that I have plans to go eat oysters pretty soon, it is turning out to be a fortnight of much oyster consumption.
Anyway, the stew is pretty good, more liquidy than I like but that seems to be true of all stews that I actually follow a recipe for rather than just throwing together by eye, but tasty. The dumpling batter also turned out thinner than I think it ought to have been, but cooked up pretty nicely - it's a light and fragile dumpling that soaks up the gravy quite well. As a whole, doesn't make for great leftovers just because the dumplings break up when they are cold (maybe if I had dished it all into separate servings while it was stil hot it would work better, but, since I forgot that the beef would need to stew for two hours and therefore didn't eat until 10 pm, shoving the whole thing into the fridge was the best I could do) and I feel iffy about reheating oysters in general, although the bowl I microwaved for lunch did not bear out any of my nebulous worries. It's a bit on the hearty side for as hot as the weather still is, but I would try it again in the winter, especially if I can track down some suet and figure out how to scale the recipe down.