Abercrombie & Feast

Our French teacher was recently complaining about the lack of good, affordable French food in Sydney.  He recommended making beef bourguignon at home to get the real “flavour of France” without the hefty restaurant price tag.  Now, I don’t think that all French food in Sydney is too expensive, but I do agree that making beef bourguignon at home is one of the easiest ways to get your French fix.  It’s also a really good way to get rid of some red wine.

Now, I know there are those of you who will be shocked by that last statement.  “Get rid of wine”, you might shout, “what a barbaric idea!  Wine is to be savoured and pampered and enjoyed out of large, fragile and expensive glasses!” 

And you would be right about most of those things (we can’t use expensive wine glasses in our house- Andy has a habit of knocking them over onto the floor) but, the fact remains that we have some wine we need to “get rid of.”  You know the wine I’m talking about.  Bottles that lurk on your wine rack for months after purchase, always being overlooked when the time to drink is upon you.  Perhaps you bought them on a wine-tasting trip, at the end of the day when your palate was *ahem* not it’s best?  Perhaps they were brought to your house during a party by friends who aren’t into wine and don’t know any better?  Or perhaps they were on sale at the bottle shop and you just can’t resist a bargain??  No matter the origin, there is a difference between wine to be savoured and pampered, and wine you’re happy to pour into a pot and add salt and pepper to.

(A small aside here- I’ve heard varying opinions about wine that’s best to cook with.  Some people say only cook with a wine you’d drink.  Others say it doesn’t matter if the wine you cook with isn’t very good.  Does anyone know which is correct?)

 So I made a big pot of beef bourguignon according to the vague directions given to us by our French teacher (which included the instruction, “Buy some beef- but not too much”), the recipe from one of my French cookbooks, and the ideas in my head of what I wanted the dish to taste like.  Overall, I’d say the results were excellent.  That’s one bottle down, 10 more to go.

Beef Bourguignon

Serves 4-6

1 kilo or 2 pounds of beef (I bought round steak, but gravy beef or stew beef would also work for this) cut into bite sized pieces
2 tablespoons plain flour
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 rasher or 2 slices of bacon, finely chopped
1 bottle of dry red wine (I used an Aussie shiraz)
1 cup beef stock
2 carrots, chopped
8-10 button mushrooms, chopped

Toss the pieces of beef with the flour, salt and pepper to taste.  Heat the butter and olive oil in a large pot with a lid over medium heat.  Put the meat in the pot and stir around until beginning to brown on all sides.  Remove the meat and keep in a bowl (to conserve all the lovely juices).

Add the onion, garlic and bacon to the pan and stir.  Allow the bacon to cook and the onions to become transparent (about 5-7 minutes). 

Put the meat and any juices in the bowl back into the pot.  Stir.  Add about 3/4 of the bottle of wine.  Fill the rest of the pot up with the beef stock.  Add salt and pepper and stir.  Turn the heat down, put the lid on the pot and simmer for 1-2 hours.  Check after an hour to see if the beef is tender.  You can cook this for a while and it just keeps getting better. 

About an hour before you’re ready to serve, add the carrots and mushrooms to the pot. 

Serve with mashed potatoes and good red wine (you could even finish the bottle you cooked with!)  The leftovers are even better the next day.  Waste not want not! 

Bonjour!  Andy and I have been taking French language lessons for 9 weeks now.  We are contemplating a move to France at some point in the future, and we’d like to be prepared if and when that day comes.  Andy has a natural knack for languages that I seem to have been born without.  So, whilst he is making lots of progress with his vocabulary, I have focused more on the “cultural” side of our education.  Specifically, reading books about food in France and cooking things from my French cookbooks. 

Last Wednesday we were in French class- and it was hard.  Not just the typical “learning a new language in your late-20′s hard”, but “we’ve worked a long day already and this is mentally exhausting” hard.  About an hour into the class I wrote Andy a little note on the top of my study guide- “Do you want to leave at the break and go have dinner at Bistro de Paris??”  He nodded, looking relieved, and we snuck out. 

Bistro de Paris is a small French restaurant just up the road from us in Bondi Junction.  I figured we could practice our French with the waitress (la serveuse) and get a good dinner while we were there.  And I was right on both counts!  Here’s me carefully considering my next French phrase:

The restaurant was crowded with groups who seemed to be having a swell time, all seated at comfy tables and booths in the dim room enjoying glasses of wine.  Were it not for the very loud man with the very Aussie accent at the table next to us we might have thought we were in Paris. 

We started with a platter of mixed charcuterie served with lovely bread.  My favourite part of this dish was the bundle of fresh herbs placed on the serving platter.  I’m not sure if this is traditional, but adding a fresh basil leaf to a bite of spicy salami on top of a piece of crunchy baguette was genius.  It brightened up the whole plate.

For mains we each ordered the specials.  I had perch in a white wine and herb sauce and Andy had Toulouse sausages on pasta with blue cheese. 

The fish was great, but the best part about this dish was the large slice of braised eggplant that the fish was resting on.  It was sweet and smoky and creamy and wow!  I could have had a whole serving of just the eggplant and the sauce.  These pics aren’t great- but it’s hard to photograph food in a dim restaurant.  We did our best!

Andy’s pasta was great, but his favourite part was the sausages.  I tried his meal and I will admit, whilst overall it was a bit too rich for me, the sausages were stellar.  Just simple pork sausages with minimum seasoning, they tasted exactly like you want your pork sausages to taste like- pork! 

Overall, Bistro de Paris is a cozy neighbourhood place and we’re lucky to have it nearby!

And don’t worry- we did practice our French.  Andy ordered our drinks in French (Deux verres du pinot noir, sil vous plait), I asked for the bill in French (L’addition, sil vous plait) and I even complimented the food in French (L’abergine est tres bonne)!  So if all we ever do in Paris is go to restaurants (and I do think that is possible) we should be all set!