Sharing with you guys a simple beef stew or beef kaldereta dish for your Christmas table using Del Monte Contadina Products. I personally switched to Contadina upon tasting the product.

With Contadina, you can taste quality and freshness of the ingredients which I really like. So here’s my dish. 🙂

Before we start cooking, we need to have our Mise-En-Place ready, meaning everything needs to be cleaned, chopped up, and ready for cooking. 🙂

First step, we need to sear our 1kg of beef kalitiran or oyster blade or flat iron steak in sizzling hot 2 tbsp. of Contadina Pure Olive Oil and 1 tbsp. of fresh butter.

Tip #1 Make sure your beef is dry and properly seasoned with salt and pepper before searing.

Once seared properly, set beef aside and saute a mixture of chopped onions (2 heads), celery stalks (4 stalks), and carrots (3 pieces). I did not add any garlic in the mixture, I will tell you why later but you may add 3 to 5 cloves of chopped garlic as well. 🙂

When onions are translucent, deglaze with red wine (roughly 1/4 cup). This step is optional. 🙂 If you don’t have red wine or allergic to alcohol, feel free to just skip this step altogether.

Put beef back in and add Contadina Diced Tomatoes. I love using Diced Tomatoes because of the texture they have and impart to the dish.

Because we are cooking a beef dish, I also added Contadina Arrabbiata Sauce since beef can hold much spice flavor.

Let the mixture simmer for 3 hours or until the beef is fork tender.

Tip #2 You have the option to add aromatics and potatoes half way done. I added 1/4 kg of marbled potatoes, few sprigs of fresh oregano, 3 bay leaves, and 1 can of liver spread.

This part is optional but 10 minutes before turning the heat off I also added 2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce, 2 tbsp. Chinese black vinegar, 1 small bottle of pitted black olives (sans the juices), and 2 tbsp. cream or evaporated milk.

*Note:* The optional last step I learned from my Singaporean book author friend, Bryan Koh, in his Filipino cookbook “Milkier Pigs & Violet Gold”. Since then I always add Worcestershire sauce, Chinese black vinegar, and evaporated milk to my kaldereta dish.

While waiting for the dish to finish, on the side I cooked 500 grams of Contadina Spaghetti to complement my beef dish.

For this I cooked I head of chopped garlic in Contadina Pure Olive Oil, and rendered Picnic Bacon Fat. When brown, I added 2 cups of cream. Simmer until just hot. On a bowl I have 5 egg yolks, 1 cup Parmesan cheese and 2 tbsp. Contadina Pure Olive Oil. Using a whisk, slowly add the hot cream mixture to the egg mixture, making sure it won’t curdle. Add in the cooked Contadina Speghetti, juice of one lemon and zest. Adjust salt and pepper, and some flat leaf parsley.

Since I will be serving a garlic infused Spaghetti with the stew, there will be garlic overload already if I add garlic to the beef mixture. But, if you are not making the pasta… Feel free to add garlic to your stew. 🙂

On a separate pan, I fried some eggplants. 🙂

Assemble the three components together, and ready to serve!!! 🙂 Instead of making a gremolata for the beef dish, I instead served it with a garlic and lemon infused pasta dish to balance the dish out. Since the pasta dish will be a tad bland and rich, I made sure the eggplants are a little salty to give the pasta dish a little boost in flavor.

For those joining the Instagram Contest, I am giving away the loot basket similar to the one above, by 1. Reposting the Instagram Photo of my kaldereta dish on Instagram. 🙂 2.Including on the caption the three (3) Contadina Products I used to make the dish. 🙂 3. Tagging me on the reposted photo so that I can keep track. 🙂 THAT EASY!!! I will annouce the winner on the 18th 🙂

Stay hungry,

thehungrychef

Nathaniel Uy