Boeuf Bourgignon

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, October 22, 2009—

DINNER WITH OLD FRIENDS tonight: Gaye was Lindsey's college roommate, and in fact introduced us to one another, so I owe her a lot. And it was her husband John's birthday. Gaye made Boeuf Bourgignon in honor of the occasion. I knew Gaye before I knew Lindsey; we met in 1952, in the literary club at our junior college. Five years later, Lindsey and I were married. Not long after that, Lindsey made her first Boeuf Bourgignon, from Julia Childs's recipe I imagine. I remember that on its way from stove to dining table it somehow slipped from her grip and fell to the floor. Nothing to do but scoop it up, spoon it back into the serving dish, and bring it to the table. Oh well: it was just our friends Kendall and Ruthie to dinner.

So tonight old friends who in fact haven't met came together, over a classic dish from the French canon. Gaye served it over polenta, an avant-garde idea I really like; it made the dish somehow Piedmontese rather than Burgundian, and Lindsey's half Piedmontese and not at all Burgundian. And afterward a good salad, and after that a nice complex cake involving chocolate.

Cabernet sauvignon, Sebastiani, 1973 (!); Merlot, private label