French Provincial Cooking (80 page)

The result of this lengthy, almost imperceptible cooking is a beautifully tender piece of meat and a rich, aromatic, but rather fat sauce; to counteract this, serve with it plenty of plain boiled or purée potatoes or rice if you prefer. The dish is also delicious cold, and resembles a
bœuf mode
, except that the meat is not larded, and the jellied sauce is thicker and darker. The vegetables must be strained off, and the fat removed when the sauce has set. The trotters, from which the bones will have almost fallen out, can be coated with melted butter and breadcrumbs, gently grilled and, with a
sauce tartare,
make a little hot hors-d’œuvre.

This is a favourite among those carefully composed, slowly cooked dishes which are the domain of French housewives and owner-cooks of modest restaurants rather than of professional chefs. Generally supposed to be of Burgundian origin (although Alfred Contour’s
Cuisinier Bourguignon
gives no recipe for it)
bœuf à la bourguignonne
has long been a nationally popular French dish, and is often referred to, or written down on menus, simply as
‘bourguignon.’
Such dishes do not, of course, have a rigid formula, each cook interpreting it according to her taste, and the following recipe is just one version. Incidentally, when I helped in a soup kitchen in France many years ago, this was the dish for feast-days and holidays.

2 lb. of topside of beef, 4 oz. of salt pork or streaky bacon (unsmoked for preference), a large onion, thyme, parsley and bayleaves,
pint of red wine, 2 tablespoons of olive oil,
pint of meat stock, preferably veal, a clove of garlic, 1 tablespoon flour, meat dripping. For the garnish,
lb. of small mushrooms, a dozen or so small whole onions.

Cut the meat into slices about 2
inches square and
inch thick. Put them into a china or earthenware dish, seasoned with salt and pepper, covered with the large sliced onion, herbs, olive oil and red wine. Leave to marinate from 3 to 6 hours.

Put a good tablespoon of beef dripping into a heavy stewing-pan of about 4 pints capacity. In this melt the salt pork or bacon, cut into
inch thick match-length strips. Add the whole peeled small onions, and let them brown, turning them over frequently and keeping the heat low. Take out the bacon when its fat becomes transparent, and remove the onions when they are nicely coloured. Set them aside with the bacon. Now put into the fat the drained and dried pieces of meat and brown them quickly on each side. Sprinkle them with the flour, shaking the pan so that the flour amalgamates with the fat and absorbs it. Pour over the strained marinade. Let it bubble half a minute; add the stock. Put in a clove of garlic and a bouquet of thyme, parsley and bayleaf tied with a thread. Cover the pan with a close-fitting lid and let it barely simmer on top of the stove for about 2 hours.

Now add the bacon and onions, and the whole mushrooms washed but not peeled and already cooked in butter or dripping for a minute or so to rid them of some of their moisture. Cook the stew another half-hour. Remove the bouquet and garlic before serving.

There should be enough for four to six people.

If more convenient, the first 2 hours’ cooking can be done in advance, the stew left to cool and the fat removed; it can then be reheated gently with the bacon, mushrooms and onions added. There are those who maintain that the dish is improved by being heated up a second time; the meat has time to mature, as it were, in the sauce.

To make a cheaper dish, chuck (shoulder) beef may be used instead of topside, and an extra 45 minutes’ cooking time allowed. And when really small onions are not available it is best simply to cook a chopped onion or two with the stew, and to leave onions out of the garnish, because large ones are not suitable for the purpose.

For formal occasions a boned joint of beef may be cooked whole and served with a similar sauce and garnish, and then becomes
pièce de bœuf à la bourguignonne.

A dish from western Provence and the Camargue demonstrating the stewing of a tough piece of meat in red wine without the addition of any stock or thickening for the sauce.

Ingredients for four people are 2 lb. of top rump of beef, 4 tablespoons of brandy, 1 large glass (6 oz.) of red wine, a bouquet of thyme, parsley and bayleaf, plus a little strip of orange peel and a crushed clove of garlic, butter and olive oil; and about 6 oz. of stoned black olives.

The meat should be cut into small neat cubes, not more than an inch square. Brown them in a mixture of olive oil and butter. Warm the brandy in a soup ladle, pour it over the meat, set light to it, shake the pan until the flames go out. Add the red wine; let it bubble fast for about half a minute. Season with only very little salt and pepper, put in the bouquet tied with thread, turn the flame as low as possible, cover the pan with at least two layers of greaseproof paper or foil and the lid.

Cook as gently as possible, on top of the stove, with a mat underneath the pan, for about 3
hours. Ten minutes before serving remove the bouquet and put in the stoned black olives. Taste for seasoning before serving. A dish of plain boiled rice can be served separately.

The flaming with brandy, although not absolutely essential, burns up the excess fat and makes quite a difference to the flavour of the finished sauce, which will be a short one, most of the liquid having been absorbed by the meat. The old Nîmoise cook who showed me how to make this particular version of the dish used Châteauneuf du Pape to cook it in (we were in the district, so it wasn’t so extravagant as it sounds, and it most definitely pays to use a decent and full-bodied wine for these beef stews) and she garnished the dish with heart-shaped croûtons of fried bread instead of rice.

This does not differ substantially from the Provençal and other daubes already described, but variations upon these kinds of dishes are always useful to know.

For this one the ingredients are approximately 2 lb. of topside or leg of beef cut into slices about
inch thick and about half the size of an ordinary postcard, 6 to 8 oz. of salt, streaky pork, a slice of raw ham (or gammon from the middle or corner cut) weighing about
lb., 2 carrots, a large onion, 3 or 4 tomatoes, a claret glass of red wine, a bouquet of herbs and a piece of dried red pepper, and if you have it, a couple of tablespoons of rich goose or beef stock.