"Victor Sack" > wrote in message
. ..
> Kent > wrote:
>
>> "Victor Sack" > wrote...
>> >
>> > Daube de Boeuf Auberge de la Madone aux Cepes et a 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 a 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). Cepes 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
>
>
Wow, I hadn't reviewed the French beef cuts in a long, long time. They have
separated the muscles more one by one than either the British our us.
However, I would still cling to the fact that sticking with one cut,
whatever it is, is preferable.
I think browning with clarified butter is rare in France. An exception may
be filet mignon, as in tournedos Rossini, or in making roux. When butter is
called for it's usually combined with olive oil. I do this myself routinely
at home. This is true in the recipe above.
Frequently in a daube when the vegetables are cooked the entire time that
the meat is, a portion of the vegetables are pureed and added back to the
dish at the end, or they are strained and left out of the dish.
Most beef daube recipes contain some stock, some even chicken stock. A wine
only daube is seen, though less commonly. We just don't prefer it.
Obviously, if you can go out and pick fresh porcinis or cepes with ease you
should do that. Most of us don't. I sometimes add a bit of hydrated dried
porcinis to the braise. I think cepes do have a slightly more delicate
flavor than Porcinis, though yes, they're essentially the same mushroom.
While Daube de Boeuf is different in every small town in southern France, it
can be argued that a true daube is cooked in a daubiere, the earthenware
casserole sealed to prevent any of the cooking liquid from evaporatang.
The above recipe is one of three of daube recipes in the Patty Wells books.
I don't doubt that calling it a daube de boeuf is accurate. I just wouldn't
cook that recipe.
I'm gong to dig up our ceramic casserole and make it again, after a long
hiatus. Thanks for the impetus

Kent