Diced beef
Plain flour
100g French shallot onions
100g button mushrooms
1 tbs tomato paste
2 cloves garlic crushed
2 cups red wine
2 cups beef stock
Bouquet garni or a bay leaf plus sprig thyme plus handful parsley
A few rashers bacon or a bit of smoked pork (eg neck)
Toss the beef (I used 600g of stewing beef) in flour and brown a heavy pan in oil.....small amounts at a time if cooking larger quantities.
Remove, and brown the pork & onion. Chuck the beef back in. Add the stock, wine, tomato paste, garlic and bouquet garni. Cook on very low temp for 2.5 hours (either in the oven or on the stove if you have a heavy casserole dish with a lid).
Now I varied a little bit from mums recipe. I wanted to use pancetta instead of bacon or pork. A good cut of bacon is hard to come by here, its very very fatty business. But the only pancetta I found was in a massive slab smothered in pepper. So I got some lush thick cut proscuitto instead. Smelled divine.
I also forgot the parsley, typical! But I did remember the thyme & the bay leaf. I used a Bordeaux red for the wine, and probably too much because it was a smaller portion. Also, I added the mushrooms a little later, after about half an hour. I had to call mum to confirm the thickening process, it should do this upfront but I think I used too little flour and too much wine. So, upon amazing advice (thanks mum) I made up a flour/water paste to add to my bourguignon at the last minute after brining it to the boil. Worked a treat.
Mum suggested serving this with a creamy polenta. Polenta is a difficult thing to get here, other than the raw corn meal. So I got that and put in one hell of an effort to get this going!
1 cup of corn meal
3 cups of beef stock
1 tbs butter
1 tbs cream cheese (will prob use sour cream next time, was rather cheesy!)
It came together kind of like a risotto. It absorbed all the liquid, so I kept adding more until it was soft and... well... yummy! The beef stock was brilliant, really tied the whole meal together. Didn't add the butter or the cheese until last minute. I think this would be ON FIRE if I had used Gruyère cheese! Swiss much??
We paired this with a Pinot Noir from California (it was on sale) and it was brilliant. Absolutely superb meal. Take it from my best and closest critic:
Note the clean plate...
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