In this recipe from Home Cooking with Charlie Trotter, a braised beef stew flavored with cardamom, garlic, onion, celery and carrots is topped with roasted potatoes, parsnips and celery root. Recipe below.

cardamom beef stew root vegetables

C harlie Trotter died terminal week. The groundbreaking restaurateur and chef—and Chicago hometown hero—was just 54. In the world of food, proclamations that someone "changed the manner nosotros consume" or "changed the way we cook" go bandied about a lot. In Trotter'southward example, both are truthful and so some. His eponymous eating place, opened in 1987 in a Lincoln Park townhouse, was an immediate success. And his innovative approach to cooking created a seismic shift in Chicago'southward restaurant scene. As William Grimes put it in The New York Times, "In the glimmer of an eye, the urban center's lagging restaurant culture… took a behemothic footstep into the future."

Trotter was a self-taught chef. He became interested in cooking through a college roommate, who was an gorging cook. After graduating from college, he traveled around the U.Southward. and Europe, dining at the finest restaurants, seeking to figure out how the "best" gained that title. His kickoff cooking chore was for some other famous Chicago chef, Gordon Sinclair. He opened Charlie Trotter'southward when he was 28.

Charlie-Trotter

The eating place is credited with popularizing the tasting menu. Trotter's cooking was locally and seasonally driven, long before the give-and-take locavore existed. He claimed to never echo a dish, devising the evening'due south menu based on what he found at the market in the morning. Along the way, Trotter received many accolades, including ten James Beard Foundation awards and 5 stars—the highest ranking—from the Mobil Travel Guide. And Charlie Trotter's was one of just 3 restaurants in Chicago to be awarded two stars by the Michelin Guide when it debuted hither in 2010.

Trotter continues to shape Chicago's reputation as a culinary center. Among those who trained in his exacting and often mercurial kitchen are Grant Achatz of Alinea and Next fame, Graham Elliot, Moto's Homaro Cantu, Yusho'south Matthias Merges and Urban Belly's Beak Kim.

My own connection to Charlie Trotter was primarily through his cookbooks—and through communicable an occasional episode of his PBS testify, The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter, when nosotros stayed in hotels (we have no cable at domicile). This was the kind of food show that is in curt supply in the historic period of Tv cooking as spectator sport, mostly ridiculous competitions and made-for-TV histrionics. Anytime I saw Trotter cook on his show, I learned something valuable about nutrient and technique.

home-cooking-charlie-trotterHis cookbooks teach something valuable too. In his introduction to Habitation Cooking with Charlie Trotter, the source for this recipe, he says the goal of the book is "elevating everyday cuisine to a higher level of composure." Trotter compared his own cooking style to jazz improvisation, mixing time-honored techniques with unexpected ingredients, layering tastes and textures to create heady new dishes. In another cookbook, Workin' More Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter, there is a recipe for lamb shanks with caramelized fennel and apricots. The shanks are braised and the fennel is roasted. Both dishes use both dried and fresh apricots, creating a harmonious combination with subtle differences.

This Cardamom Beefiness Stew with Roasted Root Vegetables combines similarly flavored (but not quite the aforementioned) celery and celery root. And rather than just adding the potatoes, parsnips and celery root to the braising liquid—as yous would with most stews—he roasts them. They're served atop the stew, providing another layer of texture, color and flavor, highly-seasoned to multiple senses—equally food should.

Unremarkably, when working with cookbook recipes, I tend to tweak things to bring something of myself to the dish, sometimes mashing together multiple recipes plus my ain ideas. With this i, the only changes I fabricated were practical ones. Trotter'southward version called for meat stock made with several pounds of beefiness, lamb, venison or veal bones that you roast and and then use to build your stock. I didn't have ready admission to bones, and then I improvised. I used unsalted beef stock, a genius new product that lets you control the salt levels of the finished dish, and added bay leafage and love apple paste, both ingredients in Trotter'south meat stock. And I reduced the wine that his stock called for, boiling it down to half its volume. I learned this fox from a Daniel Boulud cookbook—information technology creates the illusion that a sauce or stock or whatever has cooked for hours.

Our roasting pan is less than wonderful, then I used our beautiful oval Staub cocotte instead of the called for roasting pan covered with foil. Because the cocotte held everything snugly, I needed less stock than the recipe called for. Otherwise, everything was by the book. And it was delicious.

Cardamom Beef Stew with Roasted Root Vegetables
Serves four

2 cups dry out blood-red vino
20 cardamom pods, crushed (or i teaspoon footing cardamom)
2 tablespoons canola oil
ane cup sliced celery
1 cup sliced carrots
2 cups chopped yellow onions
i pound stew meat, cubed
salt and freshly ground blackness pepper
1 tablespoon love apple paste
three-1/2 cups beef stock or goop, unsalted or reduced sodium (plus more, if needed)
1 bulb garlic, halved
ane bay leaf
2 cups large diced potatoes
1 cup large diced celery root
1 cup large diced parsnips
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra

Prepare the stew. Bring wine to a boil in a medium saucepan. Reduce heat to medium and cook until reduced by half, most xv minutes. Gear up aside. (If the wine reduces also much, simply elevation up with more wine.) Identify the crushed cardamom pods in a piece of cheese cloth and necktie with kitchen string to create a sachet.

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Heat canola oil in a large Dutch oven over medium flame. Add celery, carrots and onion to pot and cook for well-nigh 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to avert overly browning. Meanwhile, season stew meat with salt and pepper. Add to pot.

Quickly whisk tomato plant paste into reduced wine. Add three-ane/2 cups stock and vino/tomato paste mixture to pot and stir to combine. Add cardamom sachet (or footing cardamom), garlic bulb halves and bay leaf. Cover the pot with a tight plumbing equipment lid and braise in the oven for 2-ane/two to iii hours, until beef is completely tender. Check nigh halfway through, stirring and adding more stock if too much has cooked away.

Prepare the root vegetables. About 45 minutes before the stew is ready, toss the potatoes, celery root and parsnips with 2 tablespoons olive oil in a big bowl and season with table salt and pepper. Spread them on a lightly oiled, rimmed baking sheet and roast until golden brown, virtually 45 minutes, tossing once halfway through.

Assemble the dish. Discard cardamom sachet and bay leaf. Gently squeeze garlic bulb halves to release individual cloves into stew and discard skins. At this betoken, the cloves are mellow and meltingly soft; they volition add together wonderful flavor bursts to the stew. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as needed. Spoon stew into four shallow soup plates. Top with roasted root vegetables and serve.