Apparently this is a classic French stew. I had never heard of it before. Nor had anything quite like it. But its always excited to try new things. Especially things you aren't sure of how to pronounce. It makes me feel fancy.
Start off by cooking some bacon in a dutch oven until it is crisp and then remove, leaving the fat behind. To the fat add about 2 lbs brisket cut into cubes. Our brisket was seemed fatter than usual, and our end product had a lot of fat. I would suggest using beef chuck instead. Brown all the cubes, this might take a couple of batches to get them all done evenly. Remove once browned.
Next you are going to cook chopped onions, carrots, celery, as well as thyme rosemary, orange peel and salt and pepper. Let it cook for a few minutes and then add red wine and red wine vinegar as well as your browned meat. Let it simmer covered for about an hour. Add your bacon at that point and cook for a while longer.
Now I'm not sure if this is traditional, but we added some cooked shell pasta to our bowls. We had it on hand and the dish by itself seemed to need something. The flavors were amazingly delicious, but overall seemed really fatty. Again, it could be the cut of meat, or the bacon, but I found it difficult to finish. Also, I sliced my carrots pretty thinly. Cutting them thicker might be a better idea for next time.
First, bacon is optional here. The recipes from the other two books that I have do not use bacon- Patricia Wells' Bistro Cooking and Karen Westmoreland's Good Housekeeping cookbook. I sold the Joy since that book is fatty. Since this is a Provence dish, which is in the Mediteranian area, it is usually less fatty than dishes from the colder areas in France. Second, this book leaves out the instruction to drain the bacon fat after browing the bacon. What I saw from an American Test Kitchen cooking show (Beef Bouirgignon show) that they drain all of the bacon fats except one table spoon for browning the beef. Since your beef is fatty, you probably have to drain the fat again. Since I am in to low fat cooking, I would let the pot since in the fridge overnight so I can scoop out the solid fat. Mr. Bittman is casual about fat usage (oil and bacon), so I am surprise that he wrote a book about healthy eating and people were buying them. Paul.
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