• Basically any combination of 2 or more ingredients simmered in a liquid (stock, water, wine, beer etc) is a 'stew'.
• It differs from a soup in the ratio of liquid to solids.
• While stews can be vegetarian one tends to think of winter stews as hearty, meaty melanges made with cheep, tough meat cuts made tender by long, slow cooking.
• Stews are as old as human existence. You find them in all cultures and across all times. Stews remind us that the more we change the more we stay the same – in good and bad ways…

Stews can be scary: Stews and the Spanish Inquisition
• Stews come up over and over again in the trial records of the Spanish Inquisition. (See Linda Kay Davidson; A Drizzle of Honey: The lives and recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews).
• The 15th century saw forced conversion to Christianity of large numbers of Spanish Jews – many of whom retained their original faith in secret.
• Adafina was a veal and chickpea stew that could be made early on Friday and slow cooked to be eaten on the Sabbath - thus avoiding work on the Sabbath in accordance with Jewish law.
• It is the most beautiful combination of saffron, coriander, ginger, dates and veal (although you can use beef).
• The inquisition used the making of Adafina as evidence of crypto-Judeism in recent forced converts to Christianity.
• The most famous inquisition stew victim was Beatriz Nunez a Madrid widow who had technically converted to Christianity but who’s Christian servant Catalina Sanchez report that she was secretly keeping a kosher household by making Adafina.
• Beatriz Nunez was tried and burnt at the stake as an ‘unrepentant heretic’ in 1485.
• Adafina recipe below.

Stews and war: Napoleon’s lucky stew
• Napoleon didn’t eat before a battle so he was always ravenous when the fight was over.
• He had a ‘lucky stew’ that he insisted on eating after each successful battle. He believed that the next battle would be lost if he didn’t have his lucky stew.
• It is a curious brandy and chicken concoction. If the chef changed the recipe at all he thought it was bad luck and wouldn’t eat it. The original recipe was created in extreme haste with limited rations immediately after the 1800 French victory over the Austrians at the battle of Marengo in northern Italy. Hence the name.
•The recipe is below – but its not nearly as nice as Adafina.
• Napoleon also has the dubious honour of being the man who caused stew in a can to be invented. During Napoleon's military campaigns, French soldiers suffered from malnutrition, scurvy and starvation. In 1795, the French government offered a prize of 12,000 francs for a method of preserving food for use by the army and navy. Chef Nicolas Appert won the prize by devising a method of canning and used his winnings to the world's first commercial cannery.

Stews and the Struggle: Mrs Pillay and Georgia Gilmore
• The history of the South African freedom struggle would be very different without curry (which is after all just a form of stew).
• In December 1956 156 anti apartheid activists were detained and charged with High Treason based on their participation in the Defiance Campaign and the Kliptown Congress of the People.
• Mrs. Thayanayagee Pillay, a stalwart of the Pretoria Transvaal Indian Congress cooked curry for the trialists every day of the 5 year trial.
• She went to all the traders in Marabastad, Pretoria and got them to donate ingredients and she made sure that all the trialists were fed everyday.
• Georgia Gilmore is the American Civil Rights Movement equivalent of Mrs Pillay.
• She made Southern ‘smothered chicken’ to raise funds to sustain the 1955/56 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama.
• After Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus a boycott of public transport was organised.
• The bus boycott required people to walk or travel in private cars to get to work. Private cars need money for petrol which costs money. And this is where Mrs Gilmore’s fundraising stew, fried chicken and pound cake sales came in.

Recipes
Napoleon’s Chicken Marengo
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup unsalted butter
2 chickens portioned into 6 pieces each
2 onions, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 stalk of celery, peeled and diced
2 tablespoons cake flour
2 cups chicken stock
¼ cup brandy

• Melt the butter into the oil over a medium heat. Brown the chicken, remove from the pan and set aside.
• Add the onion, carrot and celery to the pot and cook until the onions are golden.
• Stir in the flour then add the stock and brandy. Return the meat to the pan.
• Simmer until the meat is tender and the sauce is reduced.
• Transfer the birds to a heated platter. Degrease the sauce. Blend the sauce, pour it over the meat, and serve.
Beatriz Nunez’s Adafina
500g veal cut into cubes
8 tablespoons salt
1 cup dried chickpeas
2 teaspoons ginger
¼ teaspoon galingale
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cumin
6 saffron threads, crumbled
3 tablespoons white sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic diced
2 onions, finely chopped
2 cups beef stock
5 to 6 pitted dates OR 3 tablespoons honey

• Early in the day, soak the beef in salt water (water to cover plus 2 tablespoons of salt) for 3 hours changing the water three times. Then drain and discard the water.
• Wash the chickpeas, cover with water and bring to the boil. Boil for one minute then remove trom the heat and set aside for an hour. Drain the chickpeas
• Grind all the spices and sugar together and set aside
• In a stew pot heat the olive oil add the onion and then the garlic. Add the spices and cook until the onions are soft and golden. Remove from the pan and set aside.
• Add the beef or veal to the pan and stir fry until browned
• Return the garlic, onion, spices, dates or honey to the pan with the drained chickpeas.
• Add the stock. Cover and place in 120C oven for at least 5 hours or a slow cooker overnight. If necessary add more stock.

Mrs Pillay’s Chicken Curry
1kg chicken, skinned and portioned into small enough pieces to be picked up in a hand
1 onion, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon garlic and ginger mix
½ cup sunflower oil
2 Tablespoons masala
½ teaspoons tumeric
1 medium tomato, grated
10 curry leaves, roughly chopped
1 cup green peas

• Fry the onions in the oil until golden, about 5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and add the masala, tumeric and the ginger and garlic (take off heat so pot still hot but spices won’t burn).
• Add the chicken pieces and mix well.
• Return the pot to the heat and add the tomato. Allow the mixture to simmer until it begins to form a gravy, about two minutes.
• Add the curry leaves.
• Turn down the heat and put a lid on the pot and simmer until the chicken is cooked through, about 30 minutes.
• Add the green peas and simmer until they are cooked through, about two minutes.

Where to go/ what to order in if you are too lazy to make your own stews this weekend: picked one go out option and one stay in option
• Carnivore heaven at the Monument Restaurant, Voortrekker Monument, Pretoria Tel: 012 321 6230
The buffet at the Voortrekker Monument on Sundays is epic. There are meaty stews of all types from lamb to venison, beef and chicken. Who can resist‘boere-boontjies’, stamp mielies and sweet pumpkin with their stew? When you have finished with the stews you can move onto the souskluitjies, Jan Ellis Pudding and Lammingtons straight from heaven.
• Eco-epicurean alternative – Fresh Earth Food Store, Emmarentia Tel:011 646 4404 (catering)
Meaty meals stand accused of engendering many of the world’s environmental woes. According to the United Nations senior climate expert Rajendra Pachauri “our appetite for animal flesh is boosting fertiliser production, pollution and emission of greenhouse gases to dangerous levels.” Speaking in The UK Observer newspaper Pachauri argued that “we need to all give up meat - at least for one day a week - and we can help to save the Earth.” No time like the present but who wants to chop their own vegetables for vegetable stew. Enter Chef Matthew Ballenden of the Fresh Earth Food Store in Emmarentia who will make up and deliver superb meat free stews. If you are one of those who imagines that vegetarian chefs are all bearded, poncho clad lentil purveyors Ballenden will come as a bit of shock. Not only is he beard-free but he is startlingly handsome and remarkably skilled with flavour. The Moroccan style vegetable tagine with minted couscous is clearly the reason God invented chickpeas, cardamom, saffron and perhaps even Morocco itself. Finish with gluten free chocolate brownies and super special lemon meringue pie flavoured ice cream made with organic milk and free range eggs. Saving the world one stew at a time is going to be such fun…