Dinner and a Movie: Spellbound

For my version of this classic recipe, I used pork ribs instead of pork stew meat so that I could infuse the stew with all the fantastic minerals and gelatin/collagen from the bones. It's an easy switch that will add so much nutrition to your dinner. In "traditional foods" cookbooks, bone broths are typically cooked for hours and hours to get all the nutrients out of the bones. I found that just cooking this stew until the meat fell off the bones (about 2 1/2 hours) still gave me a huge amount of natural gelatin in the final product. (You'll notice that your leftovers will become the consistency of aspic.) It's worth it to hunt around for some really high quality pork. Keep an eye out for products that are Certified Humane or find local farmers who treat their pigs well. Happy pigs = tasty, nutritious pork.



Pork Stew

2 1/2 lbs pork ribs
3 quarts water (filtered, if possible)
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 bay leaves
10 cloves, placed in a tea ball or something similar that will make them easy to remove later
1 onion, chopped
8 carrots, peeled, trimmed and cut into 2-inch lengths of similar thickness
4 medium potatoes, cut into 2-inch cubes
1/4 cup flour
Parsley, for serving

Cut the slabs of ribs into individual ribs and set aside. Heat a large dutch oven over medium-high heat and sear the ribs until golden (you will have to work in batches).  Return the ribs to the dutch oven and add three quarts of cold (preferably filtered) water, salt and pepper, bay leaves and cloves. Bring to a boil then simmer, covered, for two hours.

Add onion, carrots and potatoes and cook for another 30 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Remove ribs from the stew, pull the meat off the bones and return the meat to the stew. Make a slurry with the flour and liquid from the stew then stir the slurry into the stew and cook, stirring, until slightly thickened. Serve with minced parsley strewn over the top of the stew.

Serves 8

Adapted from "Double-measure Pork Stew" in Woman's Home Companion, March 1946.

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The ad to the right is from the same issue of Woman's Home Companion as the pork stew recipe that inspired my version. Obviously, the pairing was meant to be. Ingrid Bergman plays Dr. Constance Petersen who works at an asylum that is expecting a new head psychiatrist, Dr. Edwardes (Gregory Peck). As soon as Edwardes arrives, there's major chemistry with Constance, but she soon starts to wonder whether Edwardes is really who he says he is. The tagline for the rerelease was "Will he kiss me or kill me?"

Best known for its Dalí-designed dream sequence, Spellbound isn't one of Hitchcock's absolute best films, but anything made by Hitchcock is better than average and Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck are enjoyable together. Like several other Alfred Hitchcock films, there's a train scene and a co-starring role for Leo G. Carroll.

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