Boeuf daube

Portland, December 9, 2009—

IT'S ALWAYS BEEN one of my favorite dishes, and certainly belongs to one of the Hundred Plates — beef stew. The Provençal version requires a fixed but controversial catalog of ingredients, as does Bouillabaisse or Cassoulet. It begins with beef, of course: I bought stew meat at Laurelhurst Market -- grass-fed but (alas) grain-finished beef from what they said was the Piedmontese race of beef-cattle. Piemontese beef are a special thing, more so of course in Piemonte where they eat the grass they've lived with for centuries, at the altitudes and with the water they know. I salted the beef pieces when I got them home and let them stand an hour or so while I went shopping for the rest of the ingredients, then browned the beef in a mixture of butter and olive oil and removed them to a cast-iron cocotte. Then, in the same skillet, I cooked the vegetables,

a classic mix of aromatics: one big carrot, one big celery stalk, and three good-sized cipollini. After they were pretty well browned I dumped them on the kitchen floor, gathered them up with considerable help, rinsed them off in a colander, returned them to the skillet and cooked them some more; then added them to the beef, along with most of a bottle of red wine (Luberon, "Vielle Ferme"),

photo: Emma Monrad

the zest of half a good-sized orange (de rigeur in a Daube), and a bouquet garni.

That simmered for hours. Toward the end I added a few cloves of garlic, pressed, and a handful of little mushrooms. A pound of egg noodles supported the stew at the table; a green salad came after; and then three cheeses: Fourme d'Ambert; Cabot cheddar; Ossau d'Iraty.

Espiga, vihno regional Estremadura, Casa Santos Lima, 2008; Mas des Brousses, vin de pays d'Oc, 2007