Japanese Stew Mix Cream

The other day I was trawling the John Little sale at Singapore Expo and came across a range of semi-instant, I should say, pre-mixed, Japanese curries, stews and white sauce gravies. I tried the brown stew 2 nights ago and it was pretty delish. Today for dinner I gave the Stew Mix Cream a go. This box cost S$4.50 at the sale - I haven't had a chance to check out the retail price in grocery stores.

It says 6 servings, but perhaps The Significant Other (TSO) and I are big eaters. It turns out that after 4 servings it's all gone. (That's what happened to the first box, anyway.) The instructions are in Japanese but because there are pictures, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how it's done. 

First you dump 300 gm meat of your choice (I used 250 gm pork) with some onions and carrots and potatoes and celery and whatever else you want into a pot to cook somewhat. Then you add 800 ml water and bring everything to a boil. (I've only got pork, onions and carrots in there - it doesn't look very good yet, I know.)

When you're satisfied, turn off the heat and pour in the granules from the box. (I tried this with the fire still roaring under the pot and it turned out fine - so sue me if I'm not a stickler for detail).  Mix everything up and then return it to the fire. Add in 200ml milk (I used evaporated milk) and when that boils up, you're done!

Pour over rice, bread, pasta or even croissants - don't knock it till you've tried it! Tonight's choice was penne pasta and  it turns out  our simple Stew Mix Cream makes a pretty decent white cream sauce.

And here's how you can get the most out of stew-y leftovers - especially if there's a little more gravy than you know what to do with:-

Add more meat (fry up diced chicken or pork in a little garlic for extra flavour before mixing up the whole lot) to what you already have so you've got a decent portion

• which you can now have with some other staple
• which you can now pour over cooked pasta or rice which can then be covered with a nice layer of shredded cheese and baked for about 15 mins
• which you can then put into single-serving oven-safe bowls, cover with some puff pastry (I like Australian brand Pampas) and then bake up into a wonderful stew-with-built-in-pastry-lid supper snack
  

Isn't it great how yesterday's leftovers can become tomorrow's whatever-you-want-it-to-be?