February showers bring March flowers...

 ...Or something like that. We've had some really warm, sunny afternoons recently. It's nice not to have to bundle up before going out for the afternoon walk with Tasha. And it's nice to walk on ground that has dried out and is no longer slushy and muddy.

A French recipe for Bœuf bourguignon

 Bœuf bourguignon 

2.5 lbs. of stew beef or other tender beef
3 cups good red wine
2 level tablespoons of flour
200 grams of smoked bacon (pork belly)
2 oz. of cognac
0.5 lbs. of button mushrooms
5 tablespoons of cooking oil (olive, canola...)
75 grams of butter
salt pepper
1 large carrot
thyme and rosemary to taste

Cut the beef into 1,5-inch cubes and put them in a mixing bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil, 4 or 5 black peppercorns, a carrot cut into disks, the thyme and rosemary, and the cognac and wine. Let all that marinate for at least 4 hours.Then take the pieces of meat out of the marinade and wipe them dry. Pour the marinade through a strainer (into a bowl).

In a thick-bottomed cooking pot, heat up the remaining (uncooked) oil with 25 grams of butter and brown the beef and bacon. Take the meats out of the pot and set them aside. Pour off and discard the cooked butter and oil. Melt 50 grams of fresh butter in the same pot. Add the to make a roux and pour in the strained marinade liquid. Bring it to the boil until it has thickened and put the beef and the bacon back into it. Cover the pot and let it cook for 2.5 hours on low heat. Fifteen minutes before the cooking time is up, wash and slice the mushrooms and add them to the pot. De-grease the the sauce and serve the bourguignon in a hot serving dish.

The recipe above is my best attempt at a translation of the French recipe I base my Bœuf bourguignon on. The original French recipe is below.

 

Making the bœuf bourguignon

Instead of marinating the beef in red wine with onions, carrots, garlic, and thyme, which many recipes call for doing, I decided to coat the meat with black pepper, a little bit of ground allspice, and litle bit of smoked, spicy paprika as a dry marinade, and let it rest for an hour. (Some recipes say it's not good to use a liquid marinade because you want the meat to be as dry as possible when you brown it.)

Next, slice an onion, crush some garlic, and fry those in a pan with some smoked pork lardons (bacon). Sprinkle a tablespoon of flour over the onions and lardons let it brown as they fry. Finally, put that mixture in the pot with the the browned beef, a cut up carrot or two, most of a bottle of dry red wine, and a splash of cognac. The liquid should just barely cover the beef and onion mixture and the flour will thicken it as it comes to a boil. Put the pot on low heat and add wine or water as needed or desired while it cooks for two or three hours.

Here's what the meat looked like after it was seared and browned in the pot. One funny thing is that in the two 1970s-era cookbooks I referred to in making this bourguignon — Monique Maine's Cuisine pour toute l'année and Ginette Mathiot's Je sais cuisiner, the two recipes are very similar, even though one never mentions onions and the other never mentions carrots. Most Beef Burgundy recipes call for both.

And here's the finished bœuf bourguignon, served with linguine and wax beans (haricots beurre). You can substitute green beans or another green vegetable as you like or want. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that you can add sliced mushrooms to the stew toward the end of the cooking time.

Beef Burgundy with beef cheeks

 

I decided a few days ago that I wanted to make beef Burgundy (boeuf bourguignon) for my birthday dinner. I went to the local butcher's (we only have one left; the other retired in January) and asked about ordering a kilogram of joue de boeuf (beef cheeks). They are supposed to be the standard when it comes to tender, succulent cuts of beef.There they are above. On the right are some smoked pork lardons, (bacon) the other meat in a Beef Burgundy. The vegetables in the stew are just onions, garlic, mushrooms, and carrots. More tomorrow...