Beef Carbonade

Before we get down to it today, a little word about recipes.  Recipes, from the scribblings of the Victorian cooks to the Larousse itself, tend, at best, to assume that you have a level of knowledge about your ingredients and techniques; at worst they are a vague guide with some things likely to be forgotten or missed out deliberately!  Because of that, when you decide to do a classic dish, the first thing you have to do is find as many versions of it as you can.  The Larousse, as good as it can be, does tend to be a bit brief on the recipe front because as in itself it's a glossary of techniques.  You have to cross reference and research the dish properly.  Other books may have an agenda - they may be for money saving recipes or they may be low fat.  They are most certainly likely to be balanced to the tastes of the person who wrote them, rather than yours.

There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to balancing flavours.  The point of food is that you should enjoy it, and that means you balance things to your own palette.  Like more mustard?  Add some more mustard.  Don't like beef?  Make it with pork.  There is a way round everything.  The real trick, however, is to make it well the first time, so you get an idea of what it should taste like.

The bible of French food - in English

So - first things first, we dig out the recipe books and narrow it down to just one or two recipes that reasonably coincide.  I settled on the version I have used before and liked which is from Great Meat Cookery, edited by Tony de Angeli.  Despite being published in 1989 this book is still available new - a good sign that it was valued enough to reprint.  The numbers of old ones for sale, used, is also a sign that it is still a valuable reference book.  Certainly it's a book that I've turned to many times without any concerns that the recipes will be a problem or the results disappointing.

So - we have our recipe.  The next thing we need is our ingredients.  Forget about counting pennies right here and now, please.  This is a dish that uses a very inexpensive cut of beef (roughly £6 per kilo) and very few ingredients, so don't scrimp.  Spend the money to get the very best that you can afford.  I don't mean the most expensive, but the best.

Gather together your recipes first

When you choose your meat look for the thin lines of crumbly fat and steer away from tiny scraps with lots of gristle.  If possible, buy it in one lump and trim it yourself, you'll get far better results that way.  Get it cut from the thick end of the piece so that you have something easier to handle as well.  The thin end tends to be full of connective tissues, tendons, gristle and other stuff that you don't really want to find yourself chewing on.

When you choose your vegetables look for signs of freshness.  A cabbage should be full of colour, with crisp leaves and strong stalks.  Potatoes don't want to be black or have too many eyes, and green ones should never be used as they contain toxins.  Onions should be firm, dry, the outer leaves crisp and not dusty, the top and tail still spongy.

Choose a good quality brown ale

With meat, too, don't go for shiny redness, or sticky meat that's covered in plasma ooze.  Let it be a better colour, slightly darker, not shiny, smelling fresh and clean, but with an edge of earthiness.  You don't want it too fresh, but then you don't want it too matured for this dish, either.

Garlic wants to be papery but white, maybe a touch of purple in it, but no green and no black.  There's not much in life more revolting that opening a head of garlic to find it's a black puffball of decayed matter inside; so squeeze it.  Don't poke it, but put it in your palm and squeeze it to see if it's firm.  You don't have to bruise fruit and veg to make sure that they are ripe or ready, but you do need to use your eyes and your hands together.

Sabatiere knives

Look at the outside of it, all over, look for damage, bruising, rot; feel it, run your fingers over the surface, how does it feel?  Do your fingers find healed over damage by an insect, perhaps?  That could be a sign that in the middle of that lovely Victoria plum there is a knot of eggs just waiting to spoil your day.

Be picky, because it pays dividends on the plate.  Supermarkets are very keen on having fruit and veg uniformly coloured and uniformly sized, but that's not what's best.  What's best is fresh, undamaged, ripe, ready to use, properly stored, carefully transported, full of flavour - in fact all the things that you want from what you're eating, no matter what size or what colour or how well it matches its box mates.

Spoiled for vinegar choice

When it comes to wine vinegar I tend by default to use white wine vinegar, but in fact this dish can also take red wine vinegar quite happily, so you can use either.  Don't think you can get away with cider or sherry or balsamic, because it will affect the finished taste of the dish.  Remember, this time round is about doing it right.  The next time you cook this dish will be about doing it to suit your own tastes and ideas.

Sugar - coy, isn't it?  That recipe just says brown sugar.  Does it mean Demerara, soft, Okinowa black, dark, light, golden, Muscovado, Barbados, turbinado?  What is brown sugar?  Well, in this case it's light or dark, soft brown sugar.  That is pretty much the default setting for brown sugars.  The brown granulated sugar that you get in sachets is basically white sugar with a touch of molasses added for colour, but because it needs to flow freely it's not real brown sugar.

Only buy gadgets you have a real need for

Real brown sugar is mostly soft to the touch, slightly stick and very easy to dissolve.  It doesn't matter if you use light or dark, although dark gives a slightly richer taste.  The point of it is to smooth out the edges - we use the vinegar to sharpen things and cut through the grease from frying, but we need the sugar to counter bitterness from the frying where perhaps things may have over caramelised and moved into the cremated category.  So because this use of sugar is to counter bitter and not to actually flavour or sweeten in its own right we can safely use pretty much any true brown sugar that we have to hand, so long as it's soft.

By the way - if you open a pack of soft sugar to find a solid lump that resists all attempts at breaking it up without using road digging equipment its very simple to soften it back up again.  Put it all into a bowl so that it has a gap of several inches between the top of the sugar and the top of the bowl.  Put a tea towel or other clean cloth under the tap and soak it thoroughly before wringing it out again.  The towel won't be dry, no matter how hard you wring it, because the fibres have soaked up the moisture.  Place the towel over the top of the bowl and put it aside for a few hours.  When you go back to the bowl the sugar, which attracts water, will have softened back into fluffy granules again.

It pays to have more than one type of frying pan

Another oddity is French mustard.  You see what I mean about failing to narrow things down to specifics?  Do I use my French's mustard?  Do I use wholegrain?  Do I use Grey Pupon, Dijon, what *is* French mustard.  Well, of course, as any Frenchman will tell you the basic, standard French mustard is Dijon.  Not wholegrain Dijon, but just the mustard made from Dijonaise mustard seeds mixed with white wine vinegars to provide a soft, smooth, oyster coloured paste that is mildly warm.  You don't want to change this for English mustard unless you want your guests retrieving the tops of their heads from the ceiling - bright yellow English mustard is much more harsh, much hotter and far more vinegar is used to make it up - it's also got malt vinegar in it which is harsher than wine vinegar.

So - you've been to the shops, you've quizzed your butcher thoroughly about where your meat comes from, is it organic, is it local and the fifty other things that a good butcher will volunteer about a piece of meat they're selling, and you're home with your lovely treasures, ready to make the Carbonade.

Mustard is never just mustard - choose carefully

This means it's about time to talk through the equipment you're going to need to make the dish.  I would recommend the largest casserole dish you have with a tight lid on it, be it enamel or stainless steel.  The point being that the juices will evaporate, rise up into the lid and come back down into the dish as the heat works its way through the contents.  If you use a tiny, deep dish, you will end up with something that has more heat on the outside of the dish than the middle, so your meat will vary in tenderness.  If you use a large casserole with lots of space for the meat to spread out in the juices, it all gets the heat from the oven evenly and will be cooked equally all the way through.

People all around the world have their favourite skillets or frying pans or sauté pans, but for me it's hard to live without the best quality of non-stick frying pan you can afford.  I have two, a Meyer from the Kitchen Aid range and a Tefal, with the hot spot technology that lets you get the pan really hot and know when it's ready.  They're both excellent, and they're both different.  The Tefal is light and quickly adjusts to temperatures as you change the heat under it.  The Meyer is a thicker, heavier pan which holds the heat well, allowing you to turn the heat down but let the contents continue to simmer.  They each have their own uses, but this time we're using the Tefal, because we're doing high heats and quick cooking.

Gorgeous Jersey Royals - look out for the marks on the bag.
No marks, then they're not Jersey Royals.  

If you ask any chef in the world, of any sort of cuisine, they will tell you that the most important thing in their kitchen is sharp knives.  This is for several reasons - a sharp knife makes work quicker and easier, but it is also less dangerous.  If you hold your knife up to the light, and tilt it so that you can see the very cutting edge of the blade, it should not reflect light from the top.  From the sides, yes, but not the top.  If you get light off the top it means the blade is dull.  Dull blades mean you use more pressure, you fight with your meat, knives will slip, you'll end up cut or gashed.  Don't use dull knives, please, for your own sake.

We have two sets of knives in our house; my traditional Sabatiers, which are a good weight, well balanced, and where the blade is full length, running back through the whole handle, with the grip pinned onto the sides of the single piece of metal.  I love them to bits, but I have to admit they're not very good at keeping an edge, they have to be sharpened and fine tuned far more often than some other knives I've used.

Free flow brown or golden sugar is just white with colouring

Mr FC prefers his Global knives as being lighter, keeping their edge longer, being made from a single piece of metal including the handle which is shaped out of it.  We use both and either, those just happened to be the ones we bought at the time.

I'm currently torn about buying a new set of knives, I can't decide between the horrifically expensive Japanese knives with ceramic sandwich technology where a sliver of sharpened ceramic is encased in steel to provide strength to the fragile blade which can be sharpened more than steel ever could be, or a really good set of traditional Wusthof knives, which I have pined after for years and which are a bit more reasonably priced.

If you don't yet have a set of knives, don't rush to buy them, don't just order on line and for goodness sake don't pay less than the going rate.  There is a massive trade in knock off knives which are very cheap, very fragile, will blunt when looking at a blancmange and which are an utter waste of money.

Feeds at least 4 - or save some for later

The first thing to do is to go to the biggest knife store you know; that big, expensive one with the glass cupboards on the walls, securely locked, with all the knives protected behind them.

The knife you're going to use most, and the jack of all trades in the knife world is the chefs knife, and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  If you've done your research on the net before you go, you should have a good idea of the top brands out there for what you're doing.  Places like Cooking for Engineers are a good place to go for a review as they are independent and not interested in which brand comes top so much as which brand actually does the job best.

So, you're in the store, you know which brands have the best blades, now you want to feel the knife in your hand.  Ask to see a selection of chef knives, in several brands.  Pick them up with whichever hand you use most for cutting and see how they sit in your palm.  Too big?  Too small?  Awkward?  Reject it and try another.  Some companies recognise that chefs come in all sizes and provide chefs knives in several lengths, too.

Stock and ale measured and ready to go

The one that you choose should almost feel like an extension of your own hand.  Hold it properly, handle diagonally across your palm, from forefinger base to bottom outside corner of your palm and wrap your fingers lightly around the knife with even pressure.

You should never have to struggle to use the knife, it should never require a palm on the back of the blade to give it extra energy.  If it's not cutting easily then there's a problem - either it's blunt, it's the wrong knife, or it's the wrong knife for you.

1.1 kilos of completely trimmed braising steak yields plenty of lean meat

It should balance easily, if when you're holding it you unwrap your outer three fingers and leave it held by forefinger and thumb it should remain in the palm of your hand, but not be pushing up hard into it.  If it pushes up hard or tips the blade upwards it is badly balanced and that will work against you when you're using it.

So check them all, every last one of them, as thoroughly as you can.  Look for how the raised edge of the handle rests against your index finger, is that going to get annoying?  Do you need something smoother?  Maybe you hold the knife further back a bit so that's not a problem.  The trick isn't to get the flashiest knife, it's to get the knife that is best for you and easiest for you to use.  They are worth saving up decent money for, because you're going to get a lifetimes use out of this piece of equipment.  It won't be something you'll use to undo screws when you can't find your tools, nor to hammer in nails with the handle, and it certainly shouldn't be something that snaps and gets thrown in the bin after 6 months.

Garlic, mushrooms and badly chopped onions ready to go in the pan

Once you have your chefs knife, consider which other knives to put in the set.  A filleting knife is essential if you cook fish or meat, a carving knife, too.  After that the knives come in a pretty quick descending order of being needed.  Bread knives are fine, but not essential day to day, a vegetable knife is needed, but not seven different sizes straight away for doing fine decorative cuts.  You'll get a good deal on your chef's knife if you buy it as part of a set, but don't get too obsessive just yet about how many knives you're going to need.  Many chefs only ever use three out of the whole set of knives their entire career, so don't spend the extras on more knives if you don't have to.  Not straight off the bat, anyway.

Apart from your pans and your knives the remainder are just things to stir with or crush with or measure with.  If you're using non-stick you will need wooden or non-stick tools as well, to prevent damaging the finish.  You don't need a garlic press, you can crush garlic perfectly well using a heavy knife, put the side of the blade on the clove and press, then give a rough chop and you're done.  If you're going to buy tools to do the job for you my advice is as follows - 1) It's easier if it goes in the dishwasher.  2) If it's going to press things through holes, does it have something to clear the holes out easily?  3) Gimmicks bought off tv adverts rarely work; save your money.

This pan is too cold.  You can see the brown dots in the oil where juices have
already escaped, yet the meat is not yet sealed at all.  You don't want this,
 turn the heat up and get the meat properly sealed

Measuring things are the third rank of need after pots and knives, and they need to be accurate.  If your scales or spoons or cups are not standard marked then you will not get the right results, especially if you're baking, because the ingredients are all measured in specific ratios.  Spoons are quite simple, because a teaspoon measure should always hold 5ml or 5grams of water, a tablespoon should always be three teaspoons, a dessert spoon should be two teaspoons, and so on.  Jugs that are marked clearly in ml/cl and fluid ounces are useful because it means you don't need two jugs to do Metric and Imperial recipes.

Cups, however, is where things go sideways.  American cups and European/British/Australian cups are different sizes.  Also, you cannot convert a measure in a cup directly to the same weight because of the varying densities.  Take a cup of popcorn and a cup of rice and go measure them - you'll find the weights vary vastly.  This is where the internet is your friend, again.  Look up a really good conversion site that doesn't just tell you how much a cup weighs, but how much a cup of a specific thing weighs.

This is just right - hot enough to brown and seal the meat quickly, before
the juices run away into the pan

For metric weights water is always used as the basic.  One cl of water is ten grams of water and it takes up one cc or cubic centimetre of space.  You can't do the same with ounces or cups.  I can't advise getting the sort of measures that have the marks painted on, because paint comes off.  Get metal or silicone spoons and cups that have the marks moulded or stamped into them.  That way you will always know which one is the teaspoon, and you won't have to line up all the cups and guess which is a third and which is a quarter.

For your scales you will want to go with the best local manufacturer you can find.  A good tip is to look at the scales used in supermarkets and stores selling food by weight.  Because the laws state that these scales have to be calibrated regularly to ensure that you're not cheated out of stuff they have to be reasonably accurate most of the time.  That's why the stores buy the ones that stay accurate longest.

Spot the difference - this is the garlic just added to the browned onions and
ready to cook.  You can clearly see the undercooked lumps that I would
later have to remove.  

In the UK one of the best brands of digital and spring scales is Salter.  They've been around for forever and they're used everywhere for a reason, they're good.  But they're not infallible.  Once a week in a commercial kitchen or once a month or so at home take a known quantity, a small one and a big one.  Say a small bag of peanuts with a stated specific weight and a large bag of sugar that's about a kilo, but again, with a specific stated weight.  Put these on your scales in turn and see if you get the same readout as the object is supposed to weigh.  You can also buy weights to use and check your scales, but since you're likely to have things around anyway that are accurately weighed you can use those quite easily.  If you're doing molecular gastronomy you need to buy the weights, and you need to get ones that are used in laboratories to ensure absolute accuracy to at least one tenth of a gram.

For baking or general cooking within an eighth of an ounce or 3 grams or so is fine.  Just adjust them to being as accurate as you can and use them from there.  A good digital scale will have a tare function, allowing you to put a container on the scale and then zero it before weighing the contents.  This can also be used to calibrate the scale to zero at any point.

Deglazing, first the flour to soak up the oil and make a Beurré Manie

So - we have our equipment, we have our ingredients; you're now going "Please can we start cooking now?  Please???"  Ok, well, nearly.  First we have to prepare our ingredients.  But we're nearly there, so don't lose heart just yet, alright?

First we want to trim our meat, and this is the point at which there is going to be the biggest row over the blog.  In today's age we want to eat leaner meat, because it's better for us.  But that's not the whole story.  We also want to eat healthily, keep our joints lubricated, our hair shiny, our nails and bones strong, our skin glowing, and all that takes vitamins and minerals that are found in different things - including meat fat.  The fat just also happens to contain the vast majority of the taste in meat, so if you want to eat well, you need to eat a bit of fat - for your tastebuds and for your body.  What you need to recognise when you're trimming meat is that there are different types of fat.  At this point some of you will turn vegetarian, because I'm about to talk about the human muscle structure.

Adding the fluids to the flour and sugar

If you've ever done biology at school, or even opened a biology text book, you will be aware of the pictures of people without skin, showing all the muscles and veins and everything else.  The piece of meat we're using for this dish comes from the leg of the cow, the same as our legs and arms, and is a section cut from the front legs, usually above the knee.  So we're not talking about a really thick piece of meat like the rump, we're discussing a long length of meat made up of several muscles which do lots of different jobs and which each gets attached to the bone by tendons.

To get an idea of what I mean put your hands round the middle of your thigh and flex your leg.  You'll feel some bits move up, some bits move down, some bits bulge and others go flat.  It takes one muscle to bend a leg forward, and another to move it back.  But it actually takes a set of muscles to do each because we don't look like Popeye.  There are several muscles doing the same job to avoid overstraining the muscle, or in case it breaks.  Each major muscle is backed up by smaller ones attached to the bones in front or behind each other or alongside, so that they allow for lateral or twisting movement and support the main muscle doing its job.

Squashing out the biggest lumps

So, if you imagine a lot of half inflated, long balloons, all packed together, end to end in cling wrap, you're starting to see what the meat looks like.

At the end of a muscle you get a tendon.  This shiny, white or sometimes yellow membrane is very tough and definitely not wanted in your food.  Find the middle of the tendon - in short muscles you often find the tendon encases the entire muscle - and slide your knife just underneath the sheath of white, from side to side, and slide the blade gently along a few inches of the tendon.  Now get your finger and thumb in the hole you've made, and lift it up so you can see how much meat you're taking off with the tendon.  It's very thin, but very wide, so you don't have to cut deep, but you do need to take all of this off.  If you look at the meat grain on you'll see it as very thing white lines that don't spread if you try to squash it.  Follow all of these through the meat and cut them out one at a time.  You'll end up with a heap of mostly meat and some more fat.

Beginning to thicken, but still some lumps left

The second type of fat in the meat is crumbly, off white, and can be scraped off the meat or squashed under your thumbnail.  This is protective fat, it's a relative of the suet that surrounds kidneys, and is the far you don't want to worry about.  This stuff melts out of the meat, it gives the meat its moisture and tenderness and when the meat is well marbled with it, it is exactly what you want in any meat you're searing or frying.  Which we will be.  If you find a big lump of this stuff, however, you may as well just cut it right out.  Nobody wants a mouthful of the stuff.

The third thing you find in meat is gristle.  This is usually cartilage and it shows as rigid lumps of semi-transparent tissue without a grain.  It comes in slabs, so a piece will run through or across a piece of meat, but it doesn't tend to have the many offshoots that the tendons can have, pushing out into the meat.  So this is very easy to deal with.

You'll notice a colour change to orange as the stock and ale begin to boil.
And look - the lumps have magically disappeared

For this recipe I buy a kilo or so of meat.  On this occasion it weighed in at 1.1 kilos, and when I had finished trimming it I had roughly 700 and something or other grams of pure meat.  The cats enjoy this process, too, as they get given a tiny bit of the raw meat - not more than one or two centimetre cubes.  Don't make your animal obese because feeding them gives you pleasure.  This meat comes out of their normal feed weight and is given to them because it gives their coat a beautiful lustre.

Biscuit is a very happy cat

Cube your remaining meat and set it aside on the worktop.  Don't refrigerate it, you'll only upset it.  Meat clenches when it gets too hot or too cold - just like your skin and muscles do.  So when you're going to get it hot, at least let it be from room temperature, not from freezing cold.  That way it will relax quicker when you take it off the heat.  Relaxed meat = tender meat.

When you prepare onions or garlic you need to take off the tough outer layers and remove the top and bottom.  There's a good reason for that.  The bottom of the bulb is a root knot which is tough and bitter and will mary the flavour and be excessively chewy.  Discard all of it.  The top is the growth point, and has lots of tissue gathered together, but it is also the first point to dry out and pick up problems.  We don't want tough or not perfect things in our food, so we take that top bit off as well.

Adding the vinegar, mustard and teabag like bouquet garni.  Do remember to
remove the bag before you serve the dish

Mr FC has deliberately cut the onions wrong for this dish so you can see why it's wrong.  He has cut his onion halves from side to side instead of from top to bottom.  This means that the inner pieces, which are more likely to be held together at the top, and the outside edges which curve downwards, are going to result in slabs of onion.  If you cut it from top to bottom you get thin slivers of onion which cook evenly, don't get tough or overcooked while you're trying to cook the slabs, and which will give an even texture and taste to the meal.  See, there's a reason why your teacher was picky about which way you do things.

With garlic it has to be crushed to release the oils which hold the flavour.  Just slicing or chopping the cloves will result in the odd bit of garlic flavour here and there.  To get that flavour throughout the dish you need to squash the thing, break open the cell structure and let the oil out.

Mushrooms added, ready to simmer

If you buy tiny button mushrooms, just use them whole, otherwise if there are any huge ones make sure you halve them through the middle, top to bottom. Measure out things like the stock and ale before you start, put them into little bowls by the stove and it will save you fumbling for the cookbook and measuring it all out as you work.  It makes things a lot smoother when you're at the hob.  You can mix up the vinegar, mustard and bouquet garni together, too, as they all go in the same pan at the same time.

It's worth while, if you buy something that comes in a small glass dish like a creme caramel, shoving the dish in the washing up and using it again later when you just need a tiny bowl for an egg yolk or similar.

Simmering gently can be done in the frying pan or the casserole.  I prefer
the casserole to reduce the possibility of slopping over the sides of a
shallow pan

At last - you should have a plate or bowl of chopped onions, a dish with some crushed garlic in it, a heap of trimmed meat, a jug of ale, a jug of stock, a pot of mushrooms, an opened jar of mustard, and the rest of the ingredients sitting by your stove, measured out and ready to go.

Pour out about 3 tablespoons of the best quality cold pressed extra virgin olive oil that you can afford and turn the heat to about 3/4's of the maximum temperature.  The first thing we are going to do is seal the meat, and this needs high heat.

A good grind of coarse sea salt and fresh black pepper.  Don't be timid with
these, your guests should not need to add more seasoning.

The intention is two fold - browning for colour and taste and also sealing the meat to keep the moisture and flavour in.  If you don't have your pan hot enough at this stage you will end up with the juices from the meat seeping into the pan and boiling your meat.  Boiled meat in casseroles ends up grey, tough and tasteless.  Don't do it.  Unless you're using a wok ring or a thermonuclear device for cooking I cannot express enough how virtually impossible it is to use too much heat at this point.  Of course, the hotter it is the faster you have to work, so you don't want to be flogged to death by your own saucepan, but do keep that heat turned up.

Because we need to keep that heat in the pan we don't want to throw the meat into it all in one go.  Break it into thirds or even more if your pan is smaller, and brown each one well before you put it into the casserole.

Delicious Jersey Royals waiting to be cooked

Once you've done that you can cook the onions.  These onions are to be browned, but not too much.  This caramelises the onions, darkening them to add colour to the gravy and making a rich, sweet vegetable.  For this you need to turn the heat down to about half.  You have to have heat to brown it, but you also need to have it cooked without burning, so turn the heat down.  This is where we step out a little from the Larousse and indeed the recipe chosen.  The recipe states to add the garlic and onions and brown.  Now I know, from experience, and particularly from cooking Indian food, that garlic is much more tender than onion.  It browns quicker, it burns quicker, and it is acrid and bitter when it burns.

Because of this I cook the onions almost completely before I even think of adding the garlic.  When the garlic is added I stir it in well and keep turning the onion as the garlic browns.  Once I get a good billow of garlic smell coming out of the pan I know it's ready for the casserole.

Well seasoned and well simmered, ready for the lid and the oven

The next stage of the dish is where we thicken it, add more colour, and where we also ensure that the maximum flavour is in the dish and not in the washing up.  It uses a technique called de-glazing.  It's exactly what it sounds like, it's taking the glaze off the pan.  Mine looks a bit odd, simply because there are no juices left in the frying pan when I empty out the onions and meat.  In the days before non-stick we had copper, steel, iron and even aluminium pans which stuck to anything and everything that went into them.  You'd finish up with bits of meat, lumps of vegetable and everything else crusted on the bottom of the pan.  The flour and the fluids were used to soak up any oils or fats, making a beurre manié which would thicken the sauce, and then floating off the bits from the bottom of the pan, rubbing gently with a wooden spoon or spatula to get everything up until the pan was almost clean again.

This is what you don't want to see in your pan - half cooked slabs of onion
when the rest is already browned.  Notice, too, the tough, green tip on the onion
on the right.  If left it this would be bitter and chewy

You do need to boil the flour.  This is what gets rid of the taste of the flour or thickening agent, you cook it off.  If your pan is dry, don't add things for it to soak up, just brown the flour gently in the pan with the sugar until they are both about the same pale golden colour.  Stir in the beer and stock and crush the lumps out of the flour.  You'll always get lumps, you can't odds it, but you can get rid of them quite easily  If you have a silicone or non stick whisk you can use this to take out the lumps very easily.  Otherwise just give them a bit of a squish with the spatula and keep stirring, gently.  Don't forget to scrape the back of the spoon, though, keeping all that flour in the pan.  When you're happy with the lack of lumps, add it all to the casserole with the remaining ingredients.

Two portions gone and the pot still has plenty more to offer

Some recipes at this point will tell you to make a flour water paste and seal the top of the casserole.  That was needed in the days when pans were hand beaten and lids didn't fit so well.  Nowadays casseroles and pans have very good lids that fit well enough that you really don't need to do this.  The fluid will stay in the dish sufficiently that you'll have plenty of gravy.

I have omitted something else from this recipe, simply because I consider it un-necessary and creating a greasy finish to the dish.  The French serve the Carbonade with slices of toasted and buttered French bread on top and a sprinkling or sprigs or parsley.  I have to admit a problem for me with garnishes.  If something is going to be in my food it has to perform a function, like adding to the flavour or texture.  I don't like parsley, it adds nothing to this dish, it's raw, so at its most foul to my taste as well, so the last thing I want to see on my plate is a ruddy great stalk of bitter parsley.  Don't feel you need to garnish everything with the ubiquitous parsley, it really isn't necessary.

The finished dish - Beef Carbonade with Jersey Royal potatoes and Savoy Cabbage

And that's all there is to it - she says looking back up the very long post.  Actually this is a very simple meal to cook, you can use a slow cooker if you have one, and you can impress people with your French Carbonade, or just enjoy beef stew with onions and mushrooms.  It makes plenty to feed at least four, and freezes like a dream in individual portions, so if you like to batch cook and use the meals for when you've had a long day at work, you can have comfort food very quick and easy with this dish from the freezer.

The evidence of a messy eater!

We had ours with savoy cabbage and Jersey Royal new potatoes, which we mashed into the copious and delicious gravy.  Mr FC took a picture of his t-shirt so you could see how much he enjoyed it all.

We hope you enjoy yours, too!

Mr & Mrs FC x



Beef Carbonade (Printable Version)

Serves 4 to 6

750g braising or chuck steak, cut into 2.5cm or 1 inch cubes
3 tablespoons good quality olive oil
2 to 3 onions, peeled and sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 to 3 tablespoons plain or all purpose flour
2 teaspoons soft brown sugar
300 ml brown ale
300ml beef stock
salt and black pepper
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
1 bouquet garni
1 teaspoon French mustard (Dijon)
100g button mushrooms, trimmed and halved if large.

To garnish

4 to 6 slices French bread
a little butter
parsley

Preheat the oven to moderate - 160ºC, 325ºF or gas mark 3.

Trim the beef.  Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a pan and brown the cubes of meat all over; then transfer to a casserole.

Fry the onions and garlic in the same fat, adding a little more oil if necessary, until lightly browned.  Transfer to the casserole.

Stir the flour into the pan juices and cook for 1 to 2 minutes then add the sugar followed by the ale and stock and bring up to the boil.

Season well, add the vinegar, bouquet garni, French mustard and mushrooms and simmer for a minute or so.

Pour into the casserole and cover very tightly.  Cook in the preheated oven for 2 to 2 and a quarter hours until tender.

Just before the casserole is ready, spread the slices of bread lightly with butter and put under a fairly low grill until just lightly browned and crisp.

Serve the casserole topped with the slices of bread and garnished with sprigs of fresh parsley.


Recipe originally printed in Great Meat Cookery, edited by Tony de Angeli, with amendments and notes by Mr & Mrs FC.