Inspired by the film Julie and Julia to eat Beef Burgundy, I set out to make it. The recipe is from The New Best Recipe book and was followed rather faithfully except for a few very minor alterations, namely no parsley garnish.
All the base ingredients are combined and ready to be boiled and placed in the oven. You can see the string of the cheesecloth bag which holds the herbs and vegetables. The liquid is rather muddy at this point after the roux has been added.
Here are the wines I bought at Trader Joe's for general use. We "tested" a few glasses during the long cooking process so I needed to pop two bottles. I would say both wines were rather characterless but sufficient to make the sauce. A richer, more interesting wine would probably make this dish peerless. The book suggests a good Pinot Noir or Burgundy.
After the recipe timings lapsed, the result was soupier than I expected. I learned that my electric range is rather underpowered. If I'm following a recipe very closely, ingredients seem to take much longer than the book expects. With the coils on the highest heat (say where water is at a rolling boil), I need to cook everything nearly twice as long, which is tricky when quick sauteeing or serious browning is called for. I also need to preheat the coils for quite a while, so the lag needs to be calculated into my cooking times. On tricky projects, I tend to burn all the coils on different temps so firing works more quickly.
To reduce the sauce to 3 cups, I poured most of the liquid into a saute pan while the veg and meat stayed warm. The final result was a brown and slightly opaque yet glossy stew that was delicious but not quite spectacular. The first night we served the stew with rice but the next night we cooked up some fettuccine. I'm going to try it again with Julia Child's recipe, the appropriate noodle, and a better wine next time. The recipe is time consuming, not overly complicated, but better done on a lazy day.
All the base ingredients are combined and ready to be boiled and placed in the oven. You can see the string of the cheesecloth bag which holds the herbs and vegetables. The liquid is rather muddy at this point after the roux has been added.
Here are the wines I bought at Trader Joe's for general use. We "tested" a few glasses during the long cooking process so I needed to pop two bottles. I would say both wines were rather characterless but sufficient to make the sauce. A richer, more interesting wine would probably make this dish peerless. The book suggests a good Pinot Noir or Burgundy.
After the recipe timings lapsed, the result was soupier than I expected. I learned that my electric range is rather underpowered. If I'm following a recipe very closely, ingredients seem to take much longer than the book expects. With the coils on the highest heat (say where water is at a rolling boil), I need to cook everything nearly twice as long, which is tricky when quick sauteeing or serious browning is called for. I also need to preheat the coils for quite a while, so the lag needs to be calculated into my cooking times. On tricky projects, I tend to burn all the coils on different temps so firing works more quickly.
To reduce the sauce to 3 cups, I poured most of the liquid into a saute pan while the veg and meat stayed warm. The final result was a brown and slightly opaque yet glossy stew that was delicious but not quite spectacular. The first night we served the stew with rice but the next night we cooked up some fettuccine. I'm going to try it again with Julia Child's recipe, the appropriate noodle, and a better wine next time. The recipe is time consuming, not overly complicated, but better done on a lazy day.
