The celery root soup was actually last week's, but I'm slow.

The celery root soup was actually last week's, but I'm slow. This is really this week's SOTW, which I made for tonight's dinner. I give you: Alpaca Stew. No, really. There's a lot of alpaca farms around here, now, and they are good for more than wool. So I got some meat at the winter farmer's market.

It tastes lighter than beef, but definitely like a red meat. The farmer told me that it's very lean (it is), so it kind of either needs to be cooked hot and fast (i.e., not well done), or low and slow for a long time. Obs stew, so chose last one.

This recipe would work with a lot of kinds of meat, I'm sure. I kinda made it up as I went along. It made about 2.5+ quarts.

Ingredient Totals:
2-4 Tbls olive oil
1 lb. alpaca meat
2 cups Trader Joe's 2015 Vintage Ale*
10 cups beef stock
1-2 carrots
about 2 sticks celery
2 large onions
3 cloves of garlic
about 1 tsp dried marjoram
about 1.5 tsp dried thyme
2 big sprigs of dried rosemary (so probably 1-2 Tbls)
1/2-1 tsp garlic powder
1-1.5 tsp onion powder
1/2-1 tsp ground black pepper
4 Tbls tomato paste
3 medium sized "butter" potatoes

What I did:

Toss chunks of alpaca meat with some onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper; set aside
Heat pot
Add olive oil
Add carrots, celery, and one of the onions in small dice
Add garlic finely sliced
Deglaze with 1 cup ale
Add 6 cups beef stock
Add half the garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, all the marjoram and thyme, 1 sprig of rosemary
Add meat
Bring to boil, then simmer forever
Check at roughly 30 minute intervals
Add 2 cups stock as reduces
Keep checking, including tasting
Add other cup of ale
Keep checking
Add more spices and other rosemary sprig
Keep simmering and checking
When flavor seems right and reduced a lot but not too much, add potatoes in large dice, second onion in large dice, tomato paste, and last 2 cups of stock
Cover (don't want more reducing, now) until heated through and potatoes soft enough to eat

I think this took about 3.5 hours, start to finish.

*I wanted to try it. It was supposed to be a dark ale with spices in it. I didn't taste any spices, honestly. It is dark, has decent body, is quite sweet, other than the obvious hops, and definitely has a really nice fluffy, foamy head. Works well as a dark beer to cook with.