gertie
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Paris je t'adore!
Posts: 225
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Post by gertie on Feb 15, 2010 16:36:33 GMT -5
I have GitteK to thank for this recipe as I saw it on one of the sites she suggested. That one with the step by step pictures is great, though I will own up and tell you I like it because in many things, I can just eyeball what they did and throw it all together according to my own lights. Accordingly, I have described in parentheses what I actually did.
1 kg of beef sautéed trimmed (2 1/3 lb boneless sirloin on sale) 2 carrots 1 onion 30g flour (used three big heaping tablespoons) 40 cl red wine (measured with 16 oz stock container, almost 1/2 bottle ) 1 bouquet garni (generous sprigs of parsley, thyme, and celery hearts with leaves + 1 sprig rosemary) salt & pepper to taste Extra Virgin Olive Oil 40 cl veal stock (16 oz beef stock, had no veal) mushrooms (half plain white, half baby bella) pearl onions Lardons (this is the meat that becomes bacon before it has been smokes, often called fat pork or salt pork in my area) butter 2 cloves garlic
Chunk up the beef, chop the onions and carrots (large chop) prepare the bouquet garni, clean the mushrooms and chop them in half or quarters if the caps are large (reserve the stems for making stock or other purposes), crush and chop the garlic, cut the lardons in matchsticks, and heat a large skillet nice and hot. While it is warming, add your stock to crock pot set on high. Pour yourself a glass of the wine, someone has to taste test. ;D Add the oil to the hot skillet (It is hot enough when a sprinkle of water in the pan dances), brown off the meat (about 10 minutes), add the carrots and onions, brown a further 3-4 minutes, add the flour, mix in well and cook about 3-4 minutes. You should be about half way done with your glass of wine, save the rest until you finish this bit. Add the red wine and deglaze the pan, stirring up the browned bits from the pan. Spoon most of the chunks into the crock pot so as not to splash the stock around and put everything from the skillet into the crock pot plus the crushed, chopped garlic cloves and the bouquet garni, leaving on high until it begins to simmer. Rinse the skillet in hot water, and leave a half inch in the bottom when you set it back on the heat. When it boils, add the lardons, boil a minute or two until they change color slightly, then drain, returning to the empty skillet and the heat together with the pearl onions, keeping them moving until the onions begin to turn translucent and the lardons are nicely browned and beginning to give up their fat. Add the onions and lardons to the crock pot, salt and pepper lightly, and leave it simmering for at least two hours while you enjoy the rest of your glass of wine with your feet up. When it begins to smell really good in the house, struggle up, put one potato per person on to boil, and wash up the cutting board and such. Be sure to make a lot of racket, dampen your forehead, and sprinkle a bit of flour on yourself before presenting the dish. Served over crisp-boiled golden potatoes with the last of the wine, this recipe was delightful.
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Post by sunshine817 on Feb 15, 2010 16:57:15 GMT -5
Hi, Gertie -- just a couple of notes for you that might be helpful.
A Pyrex glass measuring cup will have cl on the opposite side from the oz measurements (helpful for using European measurements!) That and a small kitchen scale (I have an analog scale, but am seriously considering an electronic one) will mean you don't have to putz around converting the measurements. (a cuilliere a soupe is a tablespoon, and a cuilliere a cafe is a teaspoon)
Lardons are just small pieces of bacon -- they can be smoked or unsmoked. I buy the smoked ones most of the time, just because I like the extra flavor. In the US, I used to buy thick-cut bacon and cut it up -- matchsticks the width of the bacon and about 1/4" wide are just about the same size as the stuff I buy pre-cut here.
With French beef (specially sold "pour bourgignon") you'd chop it and marinate it in the red wine for 24 hours before you start the cooking process. With US beef, you can skip the marinating, but it sure adds nice flavour. Then you'd traditionally drain the beef (save the wine for the cooking liquid!) and toss the beef in the flour...THEN brown it. (It's illegal to hang beef to age in France, so it tends to have a bit more assertive defense to chewing, especially on tough cuts like you'd use in this dish.)
Then you don't even have to put it into a crock pot -- 2-3 hours on the stovetop will have it good and tender.
Then you'd typically serve it over wide noodles, sprinkled with fresh parsley, and more of the red wine.
(I think you and I are the major-league cooking geeks!)
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Post by denise on Feb 16, 2010 3:24:30 GMT -5
:)In the traditional Boeuf Bourguignon, served in Paris do they have carrots?
Although I love carrots on their own and with lamb I usually don't like the flavour they impart when cooked in beef dishes, but I have eaten Boeuf Bourguignon in Paris without a problem.
BTW....I thought we were moving towards spring, but I've woken up this morning to snow again..Oh dear! SOOO fed up of it now!...although Boeuf Bourguignon would be a great dish for today!........ off to the butchers.
Denise Love from England
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Post by Anne on Feb 16, 2010 3:55:54 GMT -5
Like Sunshine I also use smoked lardons in the receipe, 100-150 grs for 1kg of beef.
I often find the sauce to be too liquid, I like it quite thick, so I add a little cornstarch (must be diluted in a bit of COLD water before being added to the warm sauce) at the end of the cooking.
Usually serve it with carrots cooked separately in butter and a bit of water and then sprinkled with parsley. Plus either boiled potatoes or wide eggs noodles.
Sunshine, what do you mean by "It's illegal to hang beef to age in France" ? Maybe we don't talk about the same thing, but all good butchers leave their beef to age in order to get tender (the real term is "rassir", which is not very attractive ...). It is said to be one of the big differences with the meat to be found in most supermarkets, where they don't care about such subtelties and try to sell the meat as quickly as possible.
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Post by GitteK on Feb 16, 2010 4:37:07 GMT -5
Word of warning: be very sparing with the smoked bacon cubes. Last time I had B.B. at Joséphine Chez Dumonet the taste of smoked bacon was SOOOO overpowering that it killed the delicate taste of the beef and the good winesauce.
If you can't get presalted pork breast, I would take some fresh pork breast (not too fat), cut into thick slices and cover them with salt, leave in refrigerator untill the next day. Wipe off the salt and fry until crisp in your pan. Take them up and use the good, salty fat to brown the beef chunks (which you have powdered with flour). I would add the crisp salty bacon-thingies, just before serving.
ps. All meat (beef as well as pigs) is hanged up to mature/ripen in cold storage rooms: when they have butchered and cleansed the cows or pigs and cut the bodies into halves, they are hung up to ripen. You cannot eat freshly butchered meat, that would be like chewing on leathersoles.
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Post by Jody on Feb 16, 2010 6:30:44 GMT -5
I never cook the carrots in with the meat. I also don't cook the onions and bacon with the beef the entire time.I saute the bcon, add the pearl and sliced onions and a bit of garlic. Then take them out of the pan and set aside.Brown the beef in the bacon fat adding more oil if needed, sprinkle with flour and toss to absorb the oil, then add the wine and broth along with a bouquet garni...reminds me I need to get some more in Paris,. Cover and simme until almost tender then add the onions along with sauteed mushrooms and cook and additional half hour.
Like Anne I find the sauce too thin so thicken with a bit of cornstarch until thick and glossy.
We like our carrots roasted.
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Post by denise on Feb 16, 2010 7:26:03 GMT -5
:)Yes my normal way of cooking it is similar to Jodys. However today I may try the recipe posted by Gertie, although I know if I follow it to the letter there will be too much liquid in my slow cooker....and of course I will not be "testing" the wine as I go along....that's got me in trouble before!LOL!
The beef is marinating as we speak.
Denise love from England
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Post by GitteK on Feb 16, 2010 7:37:47 GMT -5
Oh you tempt me to make a big pan of this, so Gustav and I will have food for an entire week !! Agree with Jody that fried bacon bits, roasted mushrooms and "glazed" pearl onions will be added just before serving. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_bourguignonNo need to boil those all mushy in the sauce. Jody: bouquet garni ? Don't you just make one when you need it ? Is that really something you would buy pre-made ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouquet_garni
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Post by Jody on Feb 16, 2010 8:30:15 GMT -5
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gertie
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Paris je t'adore!
Posts: 225
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Post by gertie on Feb 16, 2010 9:18:36 GMT -5
Thanks for all the great additional information! On reflection, the step of blanching is probably to remove excess salt and some of that heavy bacon flavor from smoked lardons. I just went by the first source I found when I googled lardons, which said they were salted piggy stomach meat, which in the US is usually smoked for bacon (it isn't really bacon until it's smoked, technically, or so they said). At any rate, my Boeuf Bourguignon came out very tasty, but with the sauce rather thin just as Anne suggested. The picture website did say not to cover the pan tightly, so I thought that was possibly my mistake. I discovered how thin it was when I stirred it before setting my potatoes in the microwave (might technically make them more steamed than boiled), so I just turned the crock pot very low and ladled off the greater part of the liquid to a sauce pan, where I boiled it to reduce while the potatoes cooked. Since this recipe came from a French website originally, I guess some French do add carrots. Probably, like so many other popular home cook dishes, there are as many ways to make this as there are cooks. This recipe in fact wanted you to cook the onions and mushrooms each alone in a skillet with butter, but I just tossed them in the lardon fat as it seemed a needless complication (sorry think I missed the mushrooms in my original instructions). I may have overlooked the fried onion, mushrooms, and bacon being added just before serving, but as my teen had the last of the leftovers for her late night snack the same evening, there is no evidence of that mistake and I can therefore feign innocence. ;D Given the family fell to like hungry threshers, it must not have been a great issue, but I will keep it in mind next time.
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Post by sunshine817 on Feb 16, 2010 10:18:46 GMT -5
My recipe (Joy of Cooking) has carrot added with a chopped onion at the beginning -- for flavor more than anything, as it's all but dissolved by the end of the cooking. Then the pearl onions and mushrooms are added at the end.
Yes - my broth ends up thin, too -- and this would be compounded by cooking it in a crockpot versus on top of the stove. (Like Anne, a little Maizena/cornstarch slurry stirred in a few minutes before the end of cooking makes it shiny and thick).
The reason the onions and mushrooms are cooked separately is so that they give up their liquid somewhere OTHER than in the broth, which is thin enough as it is. Mushrooms give off an amazing amount of liquid when cooked, and caramelizing them separately allows you to reduce and concentrate the liquid AND brown them in a few tablespoons of butter, which makes for lots and lots of wonderful flavor.
The US ages beef for much longer than does France - I don't remember where it is that I saw it explained in detail, but saw it in a couple of blogs and such talking about why French beef tends to be a little more toothsome than US beef.
And not only CAN you buy premade bouquet garni anywhere in Paris, I see dozens and dozens of housewives buying them every week in the market. (and don't see too many buying just the components). They're no more money to buy them pre-made than they are to buy all the pieces, so why make a mess and have one more thing to futz with when you can just toss one in the pot? You can even buy bouquet garni sewn into a teabag, with a string to be looped around the handle of the pan, if you so desire. THOSE are more expensive -- and I prefer to buy the fresh ones, anyway, but I've seen them. (A scatterbrained friend handed me one as we sat down to tea one day...um, no, thanks, but I'll take Earl Grey...!!!)
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gertie
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Paris je t'adore!
Posts: 225
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Post by gertie on Feb 16, 2010 11:58:19 GMT -5
It must be lovely to be able to grab them pre-made. Some of the boutique shops might have them around here, but I have not seen them pre-made. I grow my own basil, rosemary, thyme, and sometimes parsley, so I'd be making them up myself anyways. I just like fresh so much more than dried and individual fresh herbs tend to be awfully expensive here. At least I think so, as they are just so very easy to grow. I just picked up pots of them at wally world plus a bag of potting soil and a window planter I keep on the sill in the kitchen. I don't do much besides water and harvest, my biggest hassle is keeping ahead of supply.
Hey I have a question is beef in France still dry aged? While it may be aged longer here, since the advent of vacuum packing fresh meat about 20 years ago, they use what is termed a "wet age" process. Over all beef at grocery tends to have been broken down and vacuum packed at the factory, hence it is slightly less tender and for sure much less flavorful than when dry age methods were used. I was quite happy when I read that, for I had begun to think perhaps I was mistaken how much better Grandma's roast dinners tasted than anything I have ever turned out. I've started dry aging roasts for a few days in my own home fridge, and the improvement really restored my faith in my taste memory.
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Post by Jody on Feb 16, 2010 16:01:20 GMT -5
Oh sunshine, you gave me a giggle. I thought I was the only futzer around!! My Dh said he'd never heard the word until he met me! He's heard it a lot since then.
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Post by denise on Feb 17, 2010 16:10:22 GMT -5
:)Well we had the boeuf bourguignon today instead of yesterday....another story,....but I always think casseroles and stews taste better if they have had 24 hours to "develop".
I don't know that there is a difference beween the two recipies except the gravy was very thick on the one described by Gertie. Personally I think I used a tad too much flour......I always just use red wine for the stock and a bit of water. I added the mushrooms about half an hour before it was finished and they stayed nice.
It was delicious anyway, served with taggliatelle and crusty bread to dip up!!!! mmmmmm!
Denise love from England.
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nutsabouttravel
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Fais que ton r?ve soit plus long que la nuit
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Post by nutsabouttravel on Feb 17, 2010 18:17:06 GMT -5
Gertie, I am going to try your beef bourguignon recipe and was wondering how you used the butter in your ingredients list. Thanks for posting this, by the way. mary
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Post by kerouac on Feb 20, 2010 14:59:42 GMT -5
I wouldn't put any lardons at all in boeuf bourgignon... or butter. I make it with cubed beef and the various vegetables with a bit of flour and wine (and seasonings, of course, which you can vary to your own personal taste).
However, I am planning on a new experiment soon. I have found supplies of the most fabulous oxtail in the local butcher shops catering to the African clientele. All you have to do to that is to boil it for several hours until it is falling off the bone. Then I strip the meat off the bones and use as much as I want in a dish and freeze the rest in various containers.
The boiled oxtail meat is incredibly succulent, and it seems to me that it would really reduce the cooking time of a boeuf bourgignon -- you would really only need to consider the time it takes for the vegetables to cook properly.
So that's what I am going to do next time.
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Post by Jody on Feb 20, 2010 16:18:16 GMT -5
Do let us know how it turns out. My grandmother and mother used to cook oxtail when I was a child. Lately I've been seeing it in the shops here. My favorite cut for Beef Bourg, is beef shank!
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gertie
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Paris je t'adore!
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Post by gertie on Feb 22, 2010 22:05:19 GMT -5
Oh my Kerouac, you do bring back memories! When I was young, my grandmother used to get the ox tail in the fall when they would do the butchering. Grandma used to lightly roast it, then boil it until it fell of the bone and make the most wonderful veggie stew. Thick, rich...mmmmmmm. But I never see them in shops here.
Nutsabouttravel, sorry, the butter is for when you cook the pearl onions and mushrooms.
I made the recipe again, this time I cooked the lardons to a nice crispy and then did the mushrooms and onions separately, and just added them on top when I served up as was suggested above. Think I like that better, though it cut into my relaxing with my glass of wine ;P
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Post by sunshine817 on Feb 23, 2010 18:26:50 GMT -5
Gertie, I think you have Publix - I used to see oxtail there on a fairly regular basis (and I'm guessing it's where Jody has seen it.)
Kerouac, pre-cooking the oxtail would speed things up a bit, but it would eliminate the synergy of flavors that you get by long-cooking the meat and the vegetables together. It would still be good beef stew, but you wouldn't get that very intense, deep slow-cooked flavor.
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gertie
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Paris je t'adore!
Posts: 225
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Post by gertie on Feb 24, 2010 2:31:30 GMT -5
If I were going to try this with oxtail, I'd roast the oxtail with some carrot and onion, boil it with not much water, maybe just make sure the oxtail is covered. When it falls off the bone, sieve everything, keep only the stock and the meat. Then I would caramelize some chopped onion in butter and olive oil, put them in the stock. I'd do up chopped mushrooms and carrot in the same pan, put them in the stock, too. Then I would put the flour in the juices and butter and olive oil, deglaze the pan with the wine, add all that to the stock with the oxtail meat in it. I'd let all that simmer at least an hour, and then I'd do up the pearl onions and lardons in the skillet to garnish with.
In fact, I liked your suggestion of oxtail so much, kerouac, I made it tonight just as described above. I didn't actually find the oxtail at Publix. I went to the Mexican grocery, they had lots of oxtail there. It was just wonderful, I thought the flavor was richer, but I think next time I may also go ahead with perhaps just the one sirloin I have left in the freezer from the sale that got me started making Boeuf Bourguignon to start with as I thought it could have stood to be a tad meatier to really be called that.
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