Boeuf Bourguignon

strange thing happened yesterday, my French friend Tiffany asked me to teach her how to make boeuf bourguignon. Not that I am an expert in French cooking or boeuf bourguignon, but at least I've made it before. And once again I followed Julia Child's recipe.

If you never had boeuf bourguignon before, it's not just beef stew. It's beef stew cooked to perfection. When carefully done and perfectly flavoured, Julia described the dish, and I couldn't agree more, as one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man.

Julia's recipe is a pretty time-consuming one with lots of steps, but it's worth every minute. The stew required two and a half hours to cook in the oven to let the meat absorb all the flavours of the onion, carrots, thyme, bay leaf and red wine and herbes de Provence which is not in the original Julia Child's recipe. Tiffany's mom always adds a little sprinkle of this and I'm sure Julia wouldn't mind.


The French beef stew was utterly delicious and the meat was fork tender. In the words of Julia Child, I say bon appétit!

after dinner that felt like we were somewhere in the French countryside, for dessert we were back in Britain and I made rhubarb and custard, a recipe from Jamie's book. I love this quintessential British recipe for its silky quality and the combination of sweet custard and the tartness of the rhubarb.

the leftover custard was then chilled and turned into ice cream which I had earlier with some fresh raspberries. Yum.

Day 259, recipe 127