Boeuf à la bourguignonne: Beef in Red Wine, adapted from the signature recipe by Julia Childs
Introduction: I've adapted the classic beef burgundy recipe to my own taste. I had it as a much used print out from the Net, originally by Julia Childs, and altered it over a few years to make the version recorded here. Our guests universally acclaim it. Try to prepare this 24 hours in advance to get full flavour. Enjoy.
Quantities - 8: You can adjust all the quantities proportionally for different numbers of diners.
Ingredients
Beef: 1.5 Kg beef. This should be good quality stewing beef e.g. Waygu gravy beef or Black Angus topside. It should be cut in large scallops 2 cm thick. Don't dice the scallops, leave them whole, with a horizontal length scale of about 5-6cm depending on the cut of the beef.
Other Ingredients
1 large carrot sliced
1 large onion sliced
8 or more picking onions, peeled. If they're small, make it more than 8. They are to stay whole and be served as 1-2 onions per person
500gm field mushrooms
200gm bacon, preferably solid (unsliced)
2 tsp salt
2 tsp white pepper
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 bunch basil -- strip leaves and chop to make 1 cupful
2 crumbled bay leaves
1 sachet or 2-3 tbsp tomato paste
4 large cloves peeled chopped garlic
olive oil -- splodges and splashes as required
1 long spear fresh rosemary -- strip the leaves
1-3 twigs thyme: strip the leaves to assemble 3 tsp fresh leaves
700ml bottle full-bodied red wine e.g. shiraz or cab sav
500ml carton store-bought real beef stock, low salt version (or make your own)
Preparation
Casserole dish: this needs to be quite large and able to be placed on a hotplate to bring the final mix to near-boiling before putting into the hot oven.
Bacon: Remove & discard rind. Cut into lardons 3/4cm square x 4cm long. Place in saucepan of just-boiling water and reduce heat to simmer 10 minutes. Dry lardons and reserve. If you can't get unsliced bacon, use the normal stuff and slice it "large".
Prep the oven and the casserole dish: Preheat oven to 230C with a quite large casserole dish inside to preheat too, lid off at this stage.
Boeuf: Put 1/2 cup flour into plastic bag or paper bag and add 2 tsp salt salt and 2 tsp white pepper. Add scallops of beef and shake to coat completely. Heat a pan with a 1 tbsp splodge of olive oil to high heat and put 4-5 floured scallops in the hot pan. Turn after 2 minutes. Remove after two minutes more. Bring pan back to high heat with replenished olive oil. Repeat the process until all scallops are braised. This process is not meant to cook the scallops, just to brown them nicely.
Remove the hot casserole dish from the oven. Place the scallops inside. Sprinkle with two tbsp of the flour from the bag. Toss. Place back in the oven for 4 minutes. Remove, toss again and put back in for 4 minutes more.
Remove the casserole dish for assembling the other ingredients and lower the oven temp to 160C.
Small onions:
Sliced onion and garlic: put the sliced onion and 1 tsp olive oil in pan over low-medium heat and stir a few minutes. Then add the chopped garlic and stir further couple of minutes. Don't overcook. Don't burn garlic. Add to casserole.
Mushrooms: cut these to bite-size pieces and braise in a hot pan (no oil) for a couple of minutes until just before they start to wilt. Add to casserole.
Assemble: Braise the carrot slices at high heat and add to the casserole. Then add rosemary, basil, cayenne, bacon/lardons, tomato paste, onions & garlic, thyme to the casserole. Toss everything to more evenly distribute the contents.
Blend 500ml stock with 500ml wine and pour in to just cover the solid ingredients. If necessary add the remaining 200ml wine. If not, drink the excess wine as a reward for hard work.
Cook: Place the casserole dish on a hotplate and raise temperature to just-boiling. Place the casserole (lid on!) into the 160C oven for 2.5 to 3 hours. Test seasoning at the 2 hour mark and if necessary increase S&P (fresh ground black pepper) and turn ingredients with spatula. Meat is done when pierced easily with a fork.
The stock should evelop into a thick gravy by the 2.5 hour mark. If too runny, you can always mix 1tbsp corn flour in a cup with tiny amounts of cold water until it's runny. Decant 1-2 cups gravy into a saucepan, bring to boil, add cornflower mix, stir and cook until thick, then cook a bit more in the saucepan, then return to the casserole and stir through before the final cooking period.
The dish is best left overnight in the fridge to develop the flavours. If you do this, then reheat slowly on a back burner, bring to the boil slowly over 20 minutes, not quickly, and then reduce to a simmer for a further 10m minutes low bubble to get it heated throughout.
Serve: Serve hot with options like this:
Evolved over 2009/10, recorded May 2010