A good start to any recipe
There is a local saying here that sums up the weather of the past few days. 'Ça fait la morale à zero'. As a counter to this one hunkers down in the kitchen. Very soon one can take comfort and become enveloped in the warmth and aroma of cooking, a glass of red at hand, for a spot of serious creativity. Having recently made Ribérac's version of Keith Floyd's Charente garlic soup Lesley and I were encouraged to delve further into the Floyd canon and try out his renowned Boeuf Bourgignon.
The cut known as Bourgignon from 'Race Limousin'
Beef here is not a problem. In any local butchers shop worth his or her name you will see posters gracing the tiled walls extolling the virtues of Limousin beef or 'Race Limousin'. Famed throughout France and probably much further afield this meat is the perfect base for this recipe. The Limousin is a vast area, underpopulated by us humans, but making up for this with herds of happily grazing cattle set amongst rolling green hills and dense forests. The fields in springtme are lush and verdant, wild flowers of all types fill the fields and nourish the cows. It's not hard to imagine why the meat tastes so good. We source ours at the local abattoir municipal here in Ribérac where it goes under the name of...Bourgignon. The meat for our recipe was just perfect, a deep intense claret colour marbled through with fat.
This lot will keep your blood thin!
Floyd's recipe insists on the use of two good bottles of Burgundy for the basis of the sauce. Of course this entirely depends on how deep your pockets are and how 'cheffy' you want to be. Lesley and I came to the perfect compromise, one and a half bottles of for the pot, the remainder to facilitate the cooking process. The chunkily diced meat was placed into a large container suitable for marinading and covered with the wine. Into this was added some roughly chopped shallots, onions and carrots. Floyd suggests three cloves of garlic, but looking at the amount of meat (2 kgs) and the size of the container, we added a few more. To this melange were added some generous sprigs of thyme, 4 bay leaves from our courtyard and some chopped fresh parsley. All these ingredients were gently turned and mixed together before being left to marinade overnight; you can leave it to marinade for longer if you prefer.
The remaining ingredients await their turn
When the marinading was complete some good quality streaky bacon was cut into cubes and fried (here we had to use the local cut called poitrine as sliced bacon as found commonly in the UK is hard to come by here) in a large heavy based pan. When the bacon was cooked but not crispy it was removed and the same pan used to heat up some goose fat (there really is no substitute for this so do seek it out if you want the full flavour). The meat from the marinade was then seared in the goose fat until golden brown.
The vegetables from the marinade can be used as the basis for a soup (very tasty) but at this stage, having played their part, they have no further role in the Boeuf Bourgignon recipe. The remaining liquid marinade was then stirred to brown in the same way as when you make a gravy mixture. Next a large glass of brandy (we used Armagnac) was added and then a couple of wine glass measures of Port. This was left to simmer for three hours or so, with the occasional stir. If the sauce is reducing too much you can add a little more marinade. What you are looking for at this point is a thick sauce and tender meat. Finally about 250g of chopped mushrooms were fried in butter then added to the stew. The same was done with about 250g of baby onions and when these were cooked through they were added to the stew. You can serve this dish with potato (our preference) or as Floyd suggests some local crusty bread. Eh, Voila, a perfect slice of the pre-Christmas French country kitchen.
Bouef Bourgignon, a la Floyd, kind of
The fnished product, succulent meat with great depth of flavour
The fnished product, succulent meat with great depth of flavour
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