Brazilian Carne em Molho e Polenta

Last night I attempted to re-create one of my mother-in-law’s dishes.  My in-laws live in South Brazil, and are Italian in heritage. When we last visited, she made carne em molho e polenta (basically a beef sauce over polenta), and it was easily my favorite thing we ate while there. Due to both language barriers, ingredient discrepancies between countries, and a 2 year gap between when I last ate the dish, I wasn’t sure how to go about making it. But I got creative, came up with a recipe, and it came out fantastic. My husband, the Brazilian, loved it. So here’s the sauce recipe to be put over basic polenta:

Ingredients:

1 flank steak – cut into 4 strips with the grain, and then sliced thin against the grain

½ yellow onion diced

½ green bell pepper diced

4 scallions chopped

2 cloves garlic chopped

1 cup green peas

2 tbs tomato paste

1 cup tomato puree

½ cup red wine

1 cup chicken stock

2 bay leaves

1 tbs Adobo

2 tbs olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Brown sliced meat in a pan on high in batches (so that it doesn’t end up boiling in its own juices and browns).  Pour each batch out into a bowl, conserving the juices.  I added salt on only some of the batches – I didn’t want things to get too salty.

Once meat is done, turn pot down to medium heat, add olive oil, onions, peppers, garlic, bay leaves and Adobo. Cook until soft.  Add red wine and tomato paste. Cook for 3 minutes, then add back the meat with all the juices, chicken stock, tomato puree, scallions, and peas. Cover and cook 15 minutes.

The whole process took about 40 minutes.  We used a box of quick-cooking polenta, following the directions on the box.

If you give it a shot, let me know how it turned out!


While I forgot to take a photo of MY molho, here's some photo's of my mother-in-law Anita and Tia Ignes's creation, straight from Brazil. : )