Stifado - Video Recipe (Στιφάδο)

 

Barrel of Mavrodaphne wine from 1873, the world's second oldest extant wine at 135 years. (Photo courtesy of Sotiris Blatsis)

A Stifado is essentially a savoury onion-based stew with meat and is an excellent comfort Greek food for those of us who are anticipating the winter doldrums. One can use rabbit, chicken, lamb, pork, beef or veal in this quintessentially Greek dish. Stifado can even be made with deer and moosemeat.

In this video recipe for a Beef Stifado, I use a Greek wine vinegar which can just as easily be substituted by a unique Greek red wine called Mavrodaphne (or Mavrodafni). Indeed, fellow food blogger Hank Shaw from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook swears by Mavrodaphne in hisStifado recipes, and I agree that it definitely adds another dimesion to the meal. But, for those of you who may have a hard time finding some Mavrodaphne, the wine vinegar will do just fine. For those of you who do happen to have some Mavrodaphne on hand, use it in roughly the same quantity as the vinegar in the video ( i.e. 2 or 3 tablespoons). As a side note, Mavrodaphne wine also makes an excellent accompaniment to chocolate-based sweets, so it can also be served as a dessert wine when not used in stews or the like.

So there you have it, a classic Stifado recipe as my yiayia (grandmother) used to make it. This one pot meal is rustic Greek cooking in all its simple and tasty glory.