Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Daube de Boeuf.  This is a beef stew to provoke outsized, Pacino-esque expressions of victory.  And though eating it on a weeknight means eating it at eleven at night – God, if I ever do have kids, I’m going to wind up raising them like little vampires -- the preparation takes no more than half an hour or so – there’s no sautéing or intensive slicing and dicing involved.  I’d been marinating the beef since last night, in vermouth, brandy (JC suggests I could also have used gin, which sounds good and I would have done had I had any), olive oil, sage, bay leaf, garlic, and sliced onions and carrots.  When I got home I set a pot of water on to boil and cut up half a pound of bacon into two-inch pieces.  When the water was simmering I dropped the bacon in for ten minutes of de-baconifying (I never get over shuddering when I do this, but I am JC’s servant in all things, as we have learned.)  While that was happening I cleaned and sliced some mushrooms.  I had bought crushed Parmalat tomatoes, so I didn’t have to deal with the whole peeling and seeding routine.  I do love using those Parmalat tomatoes in the cartons, it makes me feel so European.  I took the beef pieces out of the marinade and drained them.  When the bacon was done and drained and dried, I built the stew in a casserole.  And it is like building.  Laid a third of the bacon in the bottom of the pot.  Topped with a third each of the mushrooms, tomatoes, and vegetables from the marinade.  Rolled half the beef in flour, one piece at a time, and laid them closely together in a layer over the vegetables.  Repeated – bacon, vegetables, beef.  Topped with the last of the vegetables and bacon.  Poured in the marinade and enough beef broth to cover.  Brought to a simmer and stuck in a 325° oven. For three hours.  Plenty long enough to finish the movie we started over the weekend – “Frailty,” a decent enough flick – plus a couple of episodes of la Buffe (yeah, third season on DVD….) M.  M.  M-M-M.   We ate this with a wad of mesclun on the side.  We’d already eaten all the bread – it was eleven at night, come on! – with some yummery Italian cheese that tasted like our honeymoon, so it was just the stew and the bagged salad.  And perhaps it doesn’t have the same intricate flavoring of the Boeuf a la Catalane that we made last week.  That was my fault, in part, using the ossified rice.  But I also think that the long marination provided a depth of flavor the other lacked.  This was caveman stew, by which I mean that the taste of it seemed to tug at deep primitive urges, and it made me grunt.  Hunks of bacon, hunks of beef, rich thick broth. Boo-yah! (P.S. We ate some more chocolate mousse too.  I still didn’t have the gumption to get up and beat some whipped cream.  And it was still very good without it.) 7:22:37 AM    comment []