Stifado

The story

Stifado is a Greek braise of meat and a great many small whole onions in a sauce of tomato, red wine and vinegar, scented with bay leaf, cinnamon, allspice and cloves. The word comes from the Italian stufato, a stew, and Greek reference lists describe stifado as much as a cooking method as a single dish. Recipes call for about as many onions as meat by weight, so the onions are a main ingredient, not a garnish. According to The Mediterranean Dish, the oldest version was made with rabbit and no tomatoes at all; beef took over as rabbit grew harder to find, and in Greece today veal is the usual choice. The stew was once slow-cooked in a home's wood-burning oven and now simmers on the stovetop. It is a Sunday family dinner on cold fall and winter days, when a pot can bubble for two or three hours. Greek cooks serve it with orzo, hilopites noodles or potatoes, and The Greek Herald adds grated cheese over the pasta. Make it a day ahead if you can: the sauce settles and the flavors deepen overnight, and reheating takes only twenty minutes.