Beef Burgundy

I bought the book Grillhouse: Gastropub at Home by Ross Dobson  for Wil for his birthday after his request that he cook more and that we have more normal food, not so much of the Asian cuisine that I am so fond of.  As yet he has not taken inspiration from this book, but I haven't given up hope.  I don't quite know why I chose this over all the other books in the store that day, but it does have a textured cover which is kinda fun. It uses this very weird and curly text (which it annoyingly does not credit) and has a strange obsession with using brackets on chapter heading pages.  What is does do well is photography - each recipe is richly shot, lots of dark colours, strong knives and props, lots of wood. In short, very manly, goes well with steak.  It has a bunch of meat-focused recipes which is why I thought it would be to Wil's fancy, but it has so many that I have mentally marked for my own experimentation down the track. 

The first recipe I am trying is tonight's Beef Burgundy. I had noted that this was a relatively involved recipe, but I was a little too eager and didn't pay sufficient attention.  Warning to young players: ALWAYS READ THE RECIPE, IN FULL, FIRST.  I fail this almost every time and things usually turn out ok, but they probably could have turned out so much better.  My first mistake was that the beef here should marinate overnight to fully soak up all those flavours. Well mine got about 4-5 hours so not too bad. I had considered leaving this for tomorrow, but decided that the following steps were too involved for us to be dining anytime before 8-8.30pm and that's just too late for me on a weeknight. So tonight it was and here's hoping the minimal marinading isn't too detrimental. 

I've never cooked with pickling onions before and they are pesky little buggers. If you know me or my kitchen it is probably easy to imagine me all a flutter running back and forth between the bench, where I was furiously rolling the onions in a hurried attempt to peel them, and the stove where on one element my wine was reducing, and on another I had first the bacon, then the beef browning. There were no button mushrooms at my supermarket (and there had been no mushrooms at all the day before at our alternate market!) so I decided to go with regular old white mushrooms which I chopped to approximate the size. I also forgot the butter in the pan so things were a little drier than ideal and this made it all little trickier. Then I decided to skip the brandy step since I didn't have any and so no deglazing for me. Like I said - things go ok, but they could go so much better.

This dish is really not that difficult, there are just quite a few steps and things do take time. But once it's all together and bubbling away happily in the oven you've got time to clean up a smidge, pour yourself a nice glass of red if you've any leftover (I didn't, another fail) and get started on the sides.  Dobson suggests Rum & Maple mashed sweet potatoes and I love the sound of that, unfortunately the wee bottle at the back of the cabinet is whisky, not rum and that just won't do.  So, we'll have maple mashed sweet potatoes and I'll try the recipe again some day when I have rum on hand. I'm also going to throw in some steamed green vegies for myself and, of course, a slice of garlic bread for Mr. Vegie Phobic in the corner. 

1 kg chuck steak, cut into large bite-sized pieces

750mp red wine

1 carrot, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

6 cloves garlic, roughly smashed

2 sprigs thyme

2 bay leaves

35g plain flour

salt & pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

50g butter

100g bacon, sliced into 1.5cm batons

12 small pickling onions, peeled

24 button mushrooms

60ml brandy

1 beef stock cube

2 tsp lemon juice

handful flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Place the steak in a large bowl with the wine, carrot, chopped onion, celery, garlic, thyme and bay leaves. Combine well then cover and refrigerate overnight, mixing often. 

Pour the mixture through a fine sieve, picking out the meat and setting aside. Tip the other solids back into the liquid and bring to the boil over high heat.  Reduce to medium and simmer for 30 minutes or until the wine has reduced by about half.  Strain once again through a sieve, discard the solids and reserve the liquids.

Preheat the oven 150 degrees.

Place the flour on a plate and season. Roll each piece of meat in the flour lightly to coat. Heat the oil and butter in a heavy-based casserole dish over medium heat.  Add the bacon and cook for 8-10 minutes until well browned and crisp.  Rmeove from the pan, leaving as much fat in the pan as possible. Cook the beef in batches until browned all over, placing the beef in a bowl as you go.

Add the pickling onions to the pan and stir 4-5 minutes until golden. Remove and add to the beef. Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook 4-5 minutes or until softened and golden. Remove from the pan. Add the brandy and cook for 1 minute, scraping the pan to remove any sediment. Return the bacon, beef, onions, and mushrooms to the pan, and top in any juices from the bowl. Add the reserved wine mixture and bring ot the boil. Crumble the stock cube into the pan, stir to combine. Cover and transfer to the oven.

Bake for 2 hours or until the meat is very tender, stirring after 1 hour. Stir through the lemon juice and parsley, season to taste and serve.

*For those of you who are foody nuts like me, this is very similar to Julia Child's famous beef bourguignon but to my reading seems a bit less fussy and easier to follow. The ingredients are pretty much the same, although Julia includes actual stock liquid, rather than just the crumbled stock cube as suggested by Dobson. Maybe it's blasphemous, but I'm sticking to this version and then maybe I'll get Julia's crazy voice out of my head!

**In my reading for this I also stumbled upon this vegetarian version of the classic by Deb over at Smitten Kitchen.  While I usually like the idea of Wil playing the supportive husband and reading my blog I'm kinda hoping he won't see this footnote as I would love to make this dish and I'm hoping I can sneak it by him one day soon!