You could sit at home and brood–or stew–about the season. Or you could push yourself out the front door and embrace the world of soul-warming stews served up at Chicagoland eateries. From bigos to guisados, the variety is amazing and delicious. Need help getting started? Here’s a sampling of slow-simmered creations, the culinary equivalent of a chill-chasing down comforter.
Brazilian
In Brazil, Saturday is feijoada day. It’s the day most of the country’s restaurants, from the simple to the snooty, cook up versions of a thick black bean stew that has become Brazil’s national dish.
In Chicago feijoada (FEYZJ-oh-wada) is not nearly so easy to come by.
That’s changing, though. With the kitchen expansion at the food store Brasil Legal (2153 N. Western Ave.; 773-772-6650), this comforting, beany dish can be had at least once a week if you plan it right. We recently pre-ordered four feijoada dinners from Brasil Legal, where Silvana Ramos will lovingly cook up this hot thick meat and bean melange as long as she gets a few days’ notice. Each dinner comes with garlic-tinged, shredded collard greens; fluffy white rice and a side of saw dusty but addictive farofa–a mix of yucca flour, seasoning and bits of sausage.
Ramos needs the early warning because the dish requires a long, slow simmer to become thick, soft and creamy. Plus it requires certain meats that need special care.
“One of the meats we use is carne seca [dried salted beef] that we soak for a long time and change the water every two or three hours,” explains her husband, Brasil Legal owner Wellisley Ramos. “And you have to cook it for a long time so that you don’t have a plate of beans and liquid.”
Besides carne seca, Ramos’ feijoada uses different cuts of pork and two different Brazilian sausages, including the mild linguica calabresa.
“Some people like to use the feet and the ears and other parts and they call it `complete feijoada,’ but we just use more meats,” he says.
Serve it with a dish of traditional sliced oranges, hot sauce and a glass of passion fruit juice and your Brazilian Saturday will be complete.
— Monica Eng
Ethiopian
If you like to sop up stew gravy with a chunk of crusty bread–or know the value of a good tortilla for scooping up mole–then the stew-eating style at the Ethiopian Diamond Restaurant and Lounge (6120 N. Broadway; 773-338-6100) should be right up your alley. Here the stews–the mild alicha and the spicier watt–are served atop a crepe-like sourdough bread called injera. Pieces of this room temperature, pancake-thin bread are torn off, folded a bit, then used to get the stew to your mouth. Co-owners Sisay Abebe and Almaz Yigizaw credit their grandmothers, whose roots are in Ethiopia’s Gondar area, for the recipes. The yebeg alicha (bone-in lamb with onion, garlic, ginger and basil; $9.50) that we tried was wonderfully flavored, though the presence of bones made eating a bit of a challenge. The yatkilt watt, a mix of string beans, carrots and sweet potatoes seasoned with garlic, ginger and Ethiopian spices ($8.75), was surprisingly mild.
In fact, Abebe figures that the biggest confusion folks have with Ethiopian food is not the lack of silverware at the table (they’ll bring some if you ask) but the belief that the word spicy means tongue-searing hot. “They are two different things,” says Abebe, of the heat from chiles compared to the mix of spices often used in dishes here.
— Judy Hevrdejs
Hungarian
Tamas Bosze, boss at the Hungarian restaurant Paprikash (5210 W. Diversey Ave.; 773-736-4949), knows he’s probably a small voice in a bigger argument about what truly is gulyas (goulash). But get him started on the subject and . . . First there is the misperception by some, he says, that anything liberally seasoned with paprika–that bright red, slightly sweet ingredient considered the national spice of Hungary–is gulyas. Then there is the “constant argument” over which ingredients–vegetables? flour? wine?–must be included in a true gulyas and how the meat should be browned. And finally, there is this: While a soup-like paprika-seasoned meat creation may be called gulyas, a similar yet thicker creation is referred to as porkolt.
There is no argument, though, about the good eating that comes when one orders gulyas or the thicker stew version, porkolt, at Paprikash. Both deliver fork-tender meat in a deep auburn-hued gravy. In the beef version we tried, the gravy is rich with paprika, playing its subtle notes and adding depth to the dish. Gulyasleves (goulash soup based on beef) is available as a cup for $2.50; bowl, $3.50; large bowl, $5.95. As a thicker stew and made with beef (marhaporkolt; $9.95) or pork (sertesporkolt; $9.95) or tripe (pacalporkolt; $10.95), it comes with a choice of boiled potatoes or tender spaetzle. Beef is the hands-down favorite.
And not enough paprika for you? Paprikash sets tables with a shaker filled with paprika.
— J.H.
Indian
Vindaloo, with its fiery spices and complex flavor, could stand as an icon of the cooking of the Indian subcontinent. The beginnings of Vindaloo traveled with Europeans to what was the Portuguese colony of Goa on the southwest coast. Their version was a stew of pork, wine, vinegar and garlic. The Goanese added such spices as cumin, dried red chili peppers, peppercorns, cardamom, cinnamon, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, coriander and turmeric, and created the most sweat-producing of the Indian curries.
At the upscale Tiffin, The Indian Kitchen (2536 W. Devon Ave.; 773-338-2143), the Goan lamb vindaloo ($12.50) is as good an example as you’re likely to find. Chunks of lamb are marinated in aged vinegar and spices, then simmered in liquid until done, then, the menu says, “garnished with potatoes.” Those potatoes quickly sink to become less garnish than part of the magnificent whole.
At our table that night were both “mild” and “spicy” folk. We requested “medium” on the spicing, and no one was disappointed.
Tiffin also has a Goan shrimp vindaloo ($13.50), also a superlative dish, though lamb may stand up better to a very assertive broth. In a nice bit of menu writing, Tiffin touts the shrimp as “a fiery affair of shrimp and potatoes.”
To complete the meat, seafood, poultry triad in Vindaloo, check out the chicken vindaloo ($8.95) at Khyber Pass (1031 Lake St. in Oak Park; 708-445-9032).
The perfect mouth cooler for these spicy wonders is the Punjabi yogurt drink, Lasi.
— Charles Leroux
Japanese
We can thank U.S. Navy Cmdr. Matthew Perry for sukiyaki, a Japanese stew of thin-sliced beef, tofu, clear noodles and vegetables in a soy-sauce flavored broth.
The dish became popular–possible, in fact–in Japan after Perry’s 1853 visit opened that country to trade with the West. One result of such trade was the introduction of beef into the diet there.
“Yaki” denotes grilled and, depending on which source you go with, “suki” means either “as you like it” or “spade.” The latter is an allusion to peasants cooking the dish on a shovel over a flame and seems unlikely or, at least, unwieldy.
Beef is expensive in Japan, so sukiyaki (soo kee YAH kee or skee YAH kee) is a special-occasion dish. Restaurants there may list several price levels for the dish depending on the quality of beef used.
Sukiyaki sometimes is called the “friendship dish” because, some say, non-Japanese enjoy it or, others say, because it can be prepared at the table and eaten communally.
My cravings for sukiyaki rise during a driving snowstorm. This may come from a memory of a Japanese spa: a steaming bath, a luxuriant robe, and there on the plate the perfect meeting of meat and vegetables in a dish in which both end up being subservient to a wonderfully warming, flavorful, restorative broth.
Akai Hana (3223 W. Lake Ave., Wilmette; 847-251-0384), of course, is no spa. It’s a restaurant in a strip mall across the street from a Borders bookstore, but the sukiyaki fortifies against the storm nonetheless.
Akai Hana delivers its version from the kitchen, but gets what really matters right. The beef is tender, the broth both complex and homey tasting, and the dish is served hot in a metal pot that keeps it that way. The dish is made with beef, tofu, cabbage and yam noodles and is $13.75.
For a non-traditional take on the dish, try the duck-based sukiyaki ($18.50) at Katsu (2051 W. Peterson Ave.; 773-784-3383). The restaurant is open only for dinner, and the duck dish is available only as a special during the winter months.
— C.L.
Puerto Rican
For fans of feet and potatoes, only sancocho will do.
This famous Puerto Rican pigs feet and tuber stew is a weekend special at several eateries around town, but we are partial to the version at Borinquen Restaurant (1720 N. California Ave.; 773-227-6038) where chef/owner Juan (Peter) C. Figueroa cooks up a big batch every week.
With a recipe he learned from his mother, Figueroa starts with a mess of patitas (pigs feet) that he salts and boils. Next Figueroa rinses off the salt and adds aromatic vegetables and spices along with Puerto Rican tubers and starches, including green plantains, green guineos, yautia, name and squash.
The starches and feet give this stew a lovely, earthy element and comforting thickness. “But I don’t allow it to cook so long so that it gets too thick because then my first 10 servings are good but the next 12 are way too thick,” Figueroa says.
Figueroa sells the weekend stew for $4.30 for a medium portion and $7.56 for the grande, which can easily feed three. Each serving comes with white rice “but some people also come and order a mofongo [deep fried plantain ball with garlic and pork] then break it up and throw it on top.”
Like a lot of weekend soups in various cultures, sancocho is popular on these days because it is believed to relieve a hangover (the tubers are said to absorb some of the poison leftover in the stomach). “It’s traditionally a weekend thing but we are seeing people ask for it on Wednesday and Thursdays too,” Figueroa says. “I think it’s because more people start partying early in the week these days.”
For those who do, Figueroa says that he sometimes has frozen supplies that can be reheated for customers, and that he will eventually try to have it available fresh all week long.
— M.E.
