From the Kitchen: March 2008 Archives

It was good, I tell you! The Boozey Beef turned out just fine. Cop Car, I was right to use that bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. It made a wonderful sauce.

I skipped one step that would have made a more complex tasting sauce. I was supposed to add half a cup of cognac, and then torch it to burn off the alcohol. I passed on it this time, but I'll try it another, just to see what happens to that wonderful sauce!

I used the "steak cut" mushrooms, the ones you can get at the store that are thick cut, and they held up well to the heat of the stew. I think visually they balance better with the other ingredients than the thinner sliced mushrooms. Their texture is firmer, where the thin-sliced mushroom become too soft.

I think next time I might add the chunks of carrot later. This time around they were VERY soft. I'd like just a bit more "tooth" to their texture.

I learned one fun technique for thickening the sauce. The instructions called for three tablespoons of flour and two tablespoons of soft butter. You mix the two together to make a wet paste, and add it to the liquid in the pot. It almost instantly thickened the sauce without any stray bits of flour floating on the top. It's the same concept as making a kettle gravy with water and flour, but by coating the flour with butter, it's absorbed more evenly, and the butter adds a sheen to the sauce.

In all, it was well worth my time to play in the kitchen with this recipe. I added egg noodles, bread, coleslaw and strawberries to round out the meal. As I said.....Yummmmmm!!

When I was a kid, my mother occasionally made what she affectionately called "Boozy Beef." It is basically a beef stew made with red wine, and is more famously known as "Beef Bourguignon."

The recipe is simple. I had it in mind as I went to the grocery store, but, alas, it's been easily 20 years since I made it last, and I forgot that I would need pearl onions. It's not really a problem. My family will adjust to yellow onions, if necessary.

I tried to find a bottle of Burgundy. My grocery store has a pretty amazing wine section, and I browsed through it, looking for a Burgundy. Unfortunately, it seems that Burgundy has lost its cache. Not a bottle was to be found.

I came home to look at Elegante Mother's recipe, and it actually says "red wine."

I surfed on-line to see what other kind of wine might be used, and found chianti, Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux, zinfandel, or Pinot Noir were all suggested. I have a Cabernet Sauvigon that I hope will work.

So, it's French peasant food, elevated to French cuisine, for dinner tomorrow.

If you're interested in a simple, elegant, hearty beef stew, here's a link to what looks to be a great recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_25938,00.html