Slow Cooking

Last summer I paid the exorbitant amount (for me) of $35 for a cookbook at the Marché Jean-Talon in Montreal because it's beautiful and all the food looks incredible and the recipes sound like they'll taste incredible.  The book is Purple Citrus & Sweet Perfume:  Cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean, by Silvena Rowe.  I finally decided to make something from it this week—Yiahni, which is "slow-cooked lamb with scallions, dried cherries and lemon," except I'm using beef instead of lamb because I don't much like lamb anymore.  It was one of my favorite foods as a child, but for some reason it just doesn't taste as good to me now.  And I didn't have any scallions on hand so I used a regular yellow onion.  So we'll be having "Slow-Cooked Beef with Onions, Dried Cherries and Lemon"—Yiahni à la Dianne.

I initially intended to make this on Thursday, but when I took the stewing beef out of the fridge, I saw that it had been longer since we bought it than I remembered, so we had something else and $6.50 worth of meat went in the trash can.  I hate it when that happens.

So I decided to make it yesterday.  James bought more beef when he was out doing a wedding rehearsal.  I was working on scoring out some music.  James and the beef arrived home at about 7:15pm.  I finished the music score at about 8pm.  I started water boiling for potatoes (we're combining the Yiahni recipe with a side dish from another page, Potato Moutabel, which is potatoes mashed with lemon juice, tahini, yogurt, and cumin—yum!) and heating oil to brown the beef.  Then I read the recipe and remembered that it's supposed to be "slow-cooked."  Oops. 

"If we eat this tonight, we won't be having dinner until at least 10:00pm, honey." 

"OK, how about potatoes and eggs tonight and we'll have the beef stew thing tomorrow."

"Sounds good."

The yiahni has been stewing in the slow-cooker all night, so the house is filled with the Eastern Mediterranean this morning.  The meat has cooked down into a rich beef-and-cherry ganache.  Tonight for sure we will finally have our first meal from Purple Citrus & Sweet Perfume. 

Slow cooking at its finest.