Luau Stew

Today I made some luau stew.  Sure it was hot weather but my tummy wanted some luau stew!  What is luau stew, you might be asking.  It is made with Taro leaves and beef stew meat and seasonings.. i also made a pan of cornbread to go with it! Of course CORNBREAD is NOT what you would eat at a Hawaiian table with this dish.. it would be poi, poki to go along with it...

These are the Taro leaves.. the root of this plant is what is used to make POI.

so the root was cut off and these are the taro leaves.

These are the stems from the leaves and the outerskin has been peeled off and then the stems broken up into pieces.

Then the leaves and stems are cleaned.  As you can see I placed them in the kitchen sink filled with water and gave them a good swishing around to cleanse them.  I let them sit there for awhile as I start the stew going...

This of course is the beef stew ... I place it in a big old pot with a little oil and brown it a bit then add the water to the pot as you see below.

The beef stew meat is in the pot with water filled to about 1/2 full.  I scoop the scum from the meat boiling off and add the seasonings which I will post with the instructions later.

The next step is to go to the kitchen sink where the leaves and stems are in the water and take about 3-4 leaves and roll them up and cut strips and then add to the pot of meat and water and then add the stems as well. 

This is the stew cooking away and steam coming up so the camera couldn't get too close to the pot.  Now this is good eating!!

I have pretty much showed how to do this stew and as far as the seasonings go I do it by taste.. I make mine a little different from the way I was taught to make it by my Native Hawaiian sister in law who BTW was a wonderful cook!  She just added Hawaiian salt to the water but I put minced garlic and chicken bullion granules in mine.. For this big pot of stew I added about 1 tsp of salt, about 1 TBSP minced garlic and about 1/2 to 3/4 cup chicken boullion granules.  Just do it by taste.. start with a little and add more if needed of all the seasonings.

While that stew was cooking I got out my cast iron skillet and made a batch of corn bread to enjoy with the stew.  We didn't have poi (cause we are living in the mainland now and I forgot to pick up some red snapper for hubby to make his poki but I did get the can of sardines opened and sliced up some onion on top of the sardines and added some ALOHA shoyu ( our favorite brand) to it.

So were were both happy with our meal tonight!!