The pace was slow again as it was a Sunday and I wasn't feeling like doing anything at all. Admitting, maybe it got a bit late the evening before and all signs of being outdoors were just there so I wasn't really feeling like stepping outside the door at all.
What is sweet on those days is making a food project to full your day with. You don't end up feeling like a total bum, and at the end of the day you are rewarded with a home cooked delicious meal that makes you instantly forget all your guilt.
This week in the slow cooking sessions: Daube de boeuf.
Those colors! Aren't they stunning!
It all starts with meat and the holy trinity of cooking
Daube de boeuf is a French classic dish but with a lot of freshness inside there. It doesn't take a lot of effort, it does take some preparation time and occasionally stirring and checking what is going on.
If you have even more time? Start marinating the first part the day before to let the flavors soak in a whole night.
Now I get my beef at the local farmer here who brings 1 cow to the butcher every week. A friendly small farm with a good heart and only opened some hours per week. The rest of the time they spend with the cows actually farming them, and I really love this place.
The beef was bought in batches when there was some available. I like to cook these stews in bigger batches since they take up a lot of time.
So the holy trinity of French cooking is chopped onion, some chopped celery and also carrot but these was in bigger chunks than normally.
Take the beef chunks along with the onion, the celery, the carrots and also add in some thyme, rosemary stems and also a bay leaf* here and there. If you ask me, those herbs are something to always have in the garden so you can just steal some stems of it.
Over this whole mix you toss half a bottle of red wine. That is it! That is the marination and the longer you have time for this, the better it gets.
Starting the cooking process
Whenever you find that your marination process is finished, that means it is time to start cooking stuff. Start with collecting the beef chunks from the marinating stuff, but don't toss everything else out! I went fishing for the chunks of beef and I put them in a strainer to let the moist drip out back into the rest of the fluids.
I cooked these beef chunks in multiple batches in butter, taking out the ones that were already seared.
After this searing the beef part it was time to cook the bacon chips. It is all about the fat that comes out if it, so leave in the fat and when the chunks of bacon are ready also on the side.
In the mean time it was time to also start fishing for the veggie chunks from the red wine and I also used a strainer for that. Again, do not throw out the wine from the marination!
These veggies go into the grease of the bacon chips to cook for a bit also getting the flavors out. You can see in the picture here that they have some nice pinkish color on there from being in the red wine before.
Veggie time!
After cooking the veggies for a couple of minutes it was time to toss the wine back in there adding the other key ingredients of this dish. 3 big orange peels are the true star of this show and they give all the flavor. When removing the peel, don't go into the white part of the orange peel as that is bitter.
Next are the black olives to add in there and while most of the veggies fall apart in a stew, these olives remain their old selfs.
And that was your prep time! Chopping everything up, searing it for a bit into the pan, and adding the red wine marinating stuff in there. I added some more wine also a bit of beef stock for some extra moist in there.
Time to put on the lid, turn it to low heat and chill!
We wait, and we eat
For some reason when I read any kind of recipe of a stew, it also takes me 1 to 2 hours longer in cooking time than other people apparently.
It seems like it is never reducing enough or that the meat is not tender enough as yet. I kind of take this in consideration always and just start in the morning with everything so you don't up eating at midnight.
Taking off the lid eventually sure helped to reduce the mixture, but not as fast as I had hope for, but that was fine.
After everything fell apart and was nice and tender, the only thing to to was add fresh chopped parsley for the taste but maybe even more for the optics. It just makes stuff look good!
I ended up making more than 7 portions which some of them will be laminated and frozen and eaten another time. The fresh portion I ate with some home made sourdough bread and that was everything that it needed. Pasta would also be fine with this, or some mashed potato.
The freshness from the orange peel and the olives really gave it some Mediterranean vibes and all of a sudden I was ready for summer!
Do you know this dish? I have the feeling this one if not so common for most people.