Kent > wrote:

> "Victor Sack" > wrote...
> >
> > Daube de Boeuf Auberge de la Madone aux Cèpes et à l'Orange
> > Auberge de la Madone's Beef Stew with Wild Mushrooms and Orange
> >
> I think this recipe has problems.
>
> Mixing beef chuck and beef round is a mistake. Use one or the other. For all
> braised beef dishes we tend to use chuck, which stays moist. Round dries
> out. It really needs to be larded.

First, a mixture of at least two - and often more - of different cuts is
typical of the Provençal daubes. Second, you can thank the, at the
basic level primitive, American butchery descriptions for using such
basic, primal, cuts as chuck or round, for use in actual recipes. I
guess that is what Patricia Wells was obliged to use, for lack of better
differentiated cuts known to the general public. In France, such cuts
would be, for example, macreuse or jumeaux (which are cuts from a
particular part of chuck) and tranche grasse or tendre de tranche
(particular cuts from the round). Such cuts have enough fat and do not
necessarily need to be larded. They stay moist. In Germany, near
equivalents would be Schulternaht or Oberschale (particularly an often
very nicely marmored part of the Oberschale called Pastorenstück,
Pfaffenstück, or Bürgermeisterstück) respectively. Even in America, it
is well known that, for example, the round is divided into the top and
bottom parts and that the bottom round consists of the eye of the round
and of the "flat", which have different properties, with the "flat"
being moister. All of these cuts may or may not need larding, depending
of what you actually have on hand, and on your personal preferences.

> Browning beef with butter is a mistake. Butter doesn't tolerate heat very
> well unless it's clarified.

I use clarified butter as a default in such case, but using whole butter
is nothing unusual - it does not need to be overheated to brown pieces
of meat. Lots of recipes call for just "butter" in such cases.

> We usually use rendered salt pork fat, sometimes
> bacon fat, though you can use any oil that will brown without breaking down.
> If you add roughly chopped onions, and chunks of celery and carrot to a dish
> that you're going to braise four hours you're going to have a gloppy mess.

The vegetables and the meat are supposed to be cooked together to meld
into a stew, an ideally harmonious whole. This is typical for a lot of
stews, Provençal daubes including. If vegetables cooked _al dente_ are
desired, they are cooked separately or for a shorter time.

> A wine only braising liquid is not very appealing. A dish like this should
> have some beef stock, as in Boeuf Bourguignon.

It is your personal preference, it seems. A Provençal daube is not
boeuf à la bourguignonne and is not supposed to be one. Using stock or
broth would not be typical.

> To spend $25 or so a pound for cepes, if they're available, and add it to a
> dish this crude is a waste of $25. Fresh cepes and fresh porcinis, if you
> can find them locally are quite delicate and would be lost in the dish.

First, the cost of any ingredient in an old, traditional dish is to a
certain extent irrelevant, if you want to make it the way it had been
made over the centuries. Besides, if you gather the mushrooms yourself,
they cost you only your time (and pleasure). Cèpes or porcini (which
are one and the same) are some of the more flavourful mushrooms around.
They are added to such dishes not for their own sake, but for some of
the flavour they add to the dish as a whole - and this applies to other
mushrooms, too. If more mushrooms, cooked to highlight their own taste,
are desired, they are cooked separately or for a shorter time, just as
vegetables are.

> Patty Wells got this recipe from a restaurant. I wonder if she tried it
> enough to validate that this is indeed what she ate at the restaurant.

In this particular case, little is needed to validate anything, as the
recipe is very typical indeed of the Provençal beef daubes. Patricia
Wells lives in Provence, FWIW.

Victor