World Cup Cuisine – Greek Stifado

We decided to go traditional with Greece and opted for Stifado from Jamie Oliver’s latest book “Jamie Does…”. I cooked this on Sunday ready to eat this evening and while it was good at the time, it was even better after two days in the fridge.

It’s a very simple recipe which involves marinating some pork shoulder and some diced beef in red wine, cinnamon, cloves, all-spice, red wine vinegar and salt and pepper for a couple of hours. This is added to some softened onions along with a tin of tomatoes and then cooked for three hours. Lemon juice is added at the end and that’s it.

I was a bit skeptical at first, I knew there was a fair amount of spice in the marinade to add flavour but it just seemed too simple. The onions are softened slightly but then everything else just goes in, without any browning of the meat first. It looked a terrible mess at this point but as ist started to cook down, it began to look more attractive and, more importantly, smell brilliant.

I really need to do some work on my descriptions because I always tend to rely on words like deep, rich, earthy, comforting but that’s exactly what this was. There were complex levels of flavour from the spicing, a strong meatyness from the pork and beef and a lightness from the lemon juice added at the end.

I was worried this would be too heavy on such a warm night but it worked well with a little bread and some simple, steamed asparagus. I’m glad we went with this option rather than the halloumi I’d been craving although it’s a shame Greece didn’t go through last night as that would have given me the opportunity I needed to get my cheese fix.