{"id":19100,"date":"2017-01-25T10:04:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T09:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/?p=19100"},"modified":"2017-01-25T10:04:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T09:04:24","slug":"french-beef-and-carrot-stew-boeuf-braise-aux-carottes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/?p=19100","title":{"rendered":"French Beef and Carrot Stew (B\u0153uf brais\u00e9 aux carottes)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19120\" src=\"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/boeufcarrote_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"488\" height=\"650\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/boeufcarrote_.jpg 488w, https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/boeufcarrote_-315x420.jpg 315w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 488px) 100vw, 488px\" \/>Beef and Carrot Stew is one of those pre-nouvelle cuisine era hearty dishes,\u00a0difficult to find in restaurants and apparently also becoming rare home food. The banality of the name\u00a0might induce you to think it&#8217;s just another boring beef stew,\u00a0but\u00a0I can guarantee unique\u00a0&#8220;rustic&#8221; French flavours and, anyway, isn&#8217;t every stew different?\u00a0Looking at the photograph above you might not believe me, but, although still filling and warming, this stew\u00a0is actually not a high-fat\u00a0dish (unless you use a fatty\u00a0beef cut or add lots of bacon).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The recipe comes from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Ripailles-Stephane-Reynaud\/dp\/1743366337\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1485333255&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=ripailles\" target=\"_blank\">Ripailles by St\u00e9phane Reynaud<\/a>\u00a0(I have just learnt there is a translated English version!), a beautiful originally designed book packed with French traditional\u00a0home dishes. I have slightly tweaked the stew\u00a0throughout the years, the main change being\u00a0the use of smoked streaky bacon instead of fresh pork belly because I always do it\u00a0(undeniably due to my Polish food heritage).\u00a0I love crunchy vegetables and the author&#8217;s suggested 45 minutes to cook carrot pieces are too much for me, so I made some modifications, inspired by another\u00a0beef recipe presented by Thierry Marx, a\u00a0famous French chef.\u00a0I cook only a third of carrots from the beginning and mash them before adding the rest. Thus,I thicken my sauce and make sure it absorbed the carrots&#8217; flavours from the beginning. I cook the\u00a0remaining carrots\u00a0for about\u00a015 minutes, so that they stay crunchy and fresh\u00a0(even reheated the\u00a0are soft, but not\u00a0mushy). Obviously, you don&#8217;t have to follow my instructions if you don&#8217;t mind mushy carrots.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">TIPS:\u00a0Some people think wine&#8217;s addition is just a fancy snobbish ingredient one\u00a0can easily skip, but\u00a0I don&#8217;t advise it. From my experience here (and it&#8217;s the case of many dishes, not only French), it greatly\u00a0improves and changes flavours, giving a certain\u00a0je-ne-sais-quoi you don&#8217;t want to miss.\u00a0If you don&#8217;t have the habit of stocking cheap wine for cooking purposes, buy a bottle (not expensive, but it must be drinkable!) and freeze leftovers in two- or three-glass portions which will be easy to use in cooking afterwards. Do it whenever you\u00a0have leftover wine or when\u00a0you\u00a0open a bottle that proves not as\u00a0good as you expected&#8230; (but it cannot be spoilt either, of course!).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I always use dried rosemary and dried thyme, but if you have them fresh, use less.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Preparation: about 2-3 hours, depending on the beef cut<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Ingredients (serves 2-3):<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>500 g (about 1 lb) beef (choose a cut which is adapted to long slow cooking; my favourite are beef cheeks, though they might be difficult to find, unless you order at your butcher&#8217;s)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>2 tablespoons oil or duck fat or pork fat<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>3 big\u00a0carrots<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>5 thin slices of streaky smoked bacon or about 50-70 g smoked streaky bacon cubes<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>300 ml red wine (or a half white half red, as the author suggests)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>5\u00a0big shallots, sliced or 2 big white onions<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>4 garlic cloves, crushed<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>2 branches of celery, cut into bite-sized pieces<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>2 medium bay leaves<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>dried thyme (about two heaped teaspoons or more)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>1\/2 flat teaspoon dried rosemary<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>salt, pepper<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>1 tablespoon tomato paste<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>(chilli powder or dried chillies torn into pieces)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>fresh parsley, chopped<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Cut the beef into big cubes (about 4 cm).<\/p>\n<p>Heat oil or fat in a big pan and stir fry the beef at medium-high heat until browned.<\/p>\n<p>Add the streaky bacon\u00a0cut into small pieces, sliced shallots\u00a0and stir-fry for several minutes.<\/p>\n<p>After five minutes add the wine and, stirring from time to time, wait until it almost evaporates and everything starts to stick.<\/p>\n<p>Now add the garlic, the herbs, 1 teaspoon salt, celery,\u00a01 carrot cut into three pieces, tomato paste and, if using, chilli.<\/p>\n<p>Cover with water, give the whole stew a stir, put the lid on and let it\u00a0simmer for at least two hours (it will depend on the meat).<\/p>\n<p>Check if the meat is tender and if it&#8217;s the case, take out the carrot pieces, mash them (or mix in a mixer) and add it to the stew together with the remaining thickly sliced carrots.<\/p>\n<p>Cover and cook until the carrots are still crunchy but not too soft (it takes from ten to fifteen minutes and much less if you have young carrots).<\/p>\n<p>Taste, adjust the saltiness, add some ground pepper and serve with chopped parsley and lots of good quality crusty bread.<\/p>\n<p>This dish can be stored several days in the fridge and it freezes very well too.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beef and Carrot Stew is one of those pre-nouvelle cuisine era hearty dishes,\u00a0difficult to find in restaurants and apparently also becoming rare home food. The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[186,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19100"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19122,"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19100\/revisions\/19122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}