La Boîte à Savon: Boeuf Bourguignon

In parallel to reading the River Cottage MEAT Book, I've been trying to make very good meat dishes, not least of which I like eating them, but also because it's important to respect the animal who died to feed you: prepare his/her meat in the most delicious manner and enjoy it to the fullest.

We decided to have some friends over and to make boeuf bourguignon, for which I happen to have found a great recipe online a few years ago, rumored to have originated from Bernard Loiseau's kitchen. If enough people ask, I will translate it into English - this translation is not perfect.

The thing about boeuf bourguignon is that it is truly a labor of love. You have to love the food, and the people who will eat it, and you have to love the meat. If you don't you'll never spend the time to make this delicious dish.

The first cool thing you have to do is boil some wine and flambé the alcohol. This will definitely impress whoever happens to be in the kitchen with you (in my case: my 4.5 year old daughter).

Then you let the wine cool completely before marinating the meat, carrots, and onions overnight in the refrigerator. For the meat, I chose some shoulder (paleron) and some beef cheek. It turned out that the cheek was much more tender than the shoulder. It's also a piece of meat that many people won't eat (their loss!), and so it's a great way to participate in the total consumption of the animal.

Here are the marinated ingredients after a night in the refrigerator.

To me, one of the joys of cooking comes from sharing with my daughter. I try very hard to find things for her to do whenever she wants to participate in the kitchen, sometimes handing her a knife that's entirely too big and sharp, but she still has 10 fingers. In boeuf bourguignon, one of the garnishes is glazed onions, which you make by boiling the onions in sugar water under a wax paper cover. I got little hands to help me with making the wax paper cover.

Cooking the glazed pearl onions.

The next step is to saute some lardons, which are dices of pork belly (poitrine). The trick is to blanch them first (put in cold water and bring to the boil) as a way for getting rid of both some of the fat and some of the

You also need some mushrooms, best when sauteed in pig fat (saindou) on high heat. Season at the end to keep them from sweating too much.

The garnish, prior to being added to the dish.

Once the meat has cooked for 2-3 hours (the longer the better), have to separate the meat from the onions/carrots. You then puree the onions/carrots in the wine, and pass them through a sieve to extract the juice and leave the gritty solids behind.