I watched the news programs, but by 9:30 I was hungry and since Suzette was talking to her family, I had to cook. I decided to make an omelet with Roast Pork, Spinach, tomato, shallot, and Swiss cheese.
Suzette finally finished talking and fetched and cleaned about 12 oz. of fresh spinach. I chopped the shallot, a tomato, and about four oz. of PPI roast pork and sautéed that and then added the spinach and blanched it and then added four beaten eggs and then four or five slices of fresh Swiss gruyere cheese. The omelet was wonderful. I made a super V-8 juice wraith ½ of a mix Suzette had made and ½ Clamato juice, which we drank with the omelet.
Boeuf Bourguigonon
I follow Julia Child’s recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1 with one very important alteration. Instead of using a cut of beef with lots of fat and using boiled bacon instead of sautéed bacon from we sauté the bacon so the fat is rendered for use to sauté the meat and vegetables and we do not need to remove fat. Also in this case I decided to make 1 ½ to double the recipe.
Here is her recipe, which takes about six hours to prep and cook.
I thawed six bone in rib steaks Saturday night.
On Sunday morning during the news programs starting at 7:00 I first made the broth by removing the steaks’ from their bones and placing the bones in a stock pot. I then made a mirepoix by peeling a carrot and onion and two stalks of celery and diced them into bite sized pieces and added them to the stock pot and filled it with 5 or 6 quarts of water added a tsp. of salt and began simmering the stock.
Once the stock was simmering I then butchered all the fat and gristle from the remaining ribeye steaks and diced the meat into bite sized pieces and put the bowl of meat into the fridge.
Suzette came to the kitchen and we decided to double the recipe and cook it in two separate French casseroles. I then peeled and diced two onions and two carrots and put divided them into two bowls
We needed bacon so after we ate our omelet, we drove to Costco at 10:20 and bought bacon, kleenex, Bibb lettuce. Synthetic oil for the little truck, and coffee.
When we returned home I cut ten or eleven strips of thick sliced bacon into 1/3 inch strips and Suzette sautéed them up until crisp.
From here on we followed the recipe except Suzette needed to add some olive oil to the bacon fat to keep the meat and vegetables from scorching and as the final step where we added the diced
mushrooms and onions I diced the mushrooms and onions and sautéed them in olive oil before adding them to the stew. We also used about 2 ¼ cup of wine and 2 cups of stock because Suzette does not like the dish to have a wine taste. I used a bottle of chianti in one pot and a bottle of Cotes Du Rhone in the other pot.
The carrots and onion in the other casserole
After we added the wine and beef stock to the floured and seasoned meat and vegetables at noon, we strained the broth and I ate the meat off the boiled beef bones and mirepoix with horseradish to consume as much collagen as possible.
During the day Mike called and brought three bottles of premier Cru Aloxe-Corton 2011 from Clos du Chapitre marked down to $39.99 from god knows what original price. I could spend a lot of time talking about premier crus but I will enclose some info from Wikipedia and say that the wine was raised in a specific vineyard near the village of Aloxe-Corton, which is between The Village of Corton and Beaune in the Cote de Or wine growing region of Burgundy. Appellations take their name from the village location where the grapes are grown in France.
All the grapes in this bottle were raised within a field surrounded by a wall or clos called Chapitre.
A little after 6:00 Cynthia arrived with a lovely Caprese salad made from fresh yellow and red tomatoes and mozzarella bought on Saturday at the Farmer’s Market downtown and a hand cut kale
salad garnished with slivers of almond and dressed lightly.
Then Mike came and Susan and Charlie followed soon after.
I served glasses of Gruet Sauvage white to start with.
It was a beautiful clear warm sunny evening, so we decided to eat at the table in the garden under the gazebo, on which Suzette had set a pitcher of cosmos from our garden.
We served the Caprese and kale salad as appetizers and then I went to the house and fetched a bottle of the Aloxe-Corton. When I returned and poured glasses of the red wine everyone decided to fetch their plates of mashed potatoes and boeuf. The beef was very tender after six hours of cooking and I liked Suzette’s suggestion that we equalize the beef broth and wine, which prevented the wine creating an overpowering flavor and made the dish taste more of meat, which we liked. We needed to add salt because we had undersalted the dish; perfect for my taste but not anyone else’s.
The richness of the wine complemented the beef stew. There were no rough edges on the wine. It was smooth from the front of the tongue to the back of the throat enveloping the meat, vegetables, and mashed potatoes in luscious grapiness.
Finally after everyone oooed and aaahd as they ate and we poured out and drank the second bottle of Premier Cru, we decided it was time for dessert.
Charlie's photo of the happy campers
Susan excused herself and walked to her house to fetch the orange Grande Marnier bunt cake she had baked. When she returned I helped by getting plates and assisting her to zest the top of the cake with 90% dark chocolate sprinkles. I opened a bottle of Gruet Blanc de Noir and poured it into the wine glasses as Susan cut and served slices of bunt cake.
Finally by 9:30 we were full and ready to call it a night. We sent folks home with mashed potatoes and boeuf from the other ½ of boeuf in the other casserole that was untouched.
Bon Appetit
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