Daube de boeuf

I’ve not posted here for ages, partly because I’ve not been cooking much that I haven’t written about before, but also because I’ve been away on holiday. So, here is an attempt to remedy this situation with a classic dish

Pot-roasted shoulder of lamb

My butcher sells nice boned and rolled shoulder of lamb joints and this was what I used for dinner last night.

Daube de boeuf

A.k.a beef and red wine casserole.

This was a Bœuf Bourguignon sort of dish, but I didn’t use red Burgundy and it also had some anchovies in the mix. I love things like this, you can do so much with them and they are always lovely to eat.

What we did on our holidays …… part 1

I did take the laptop on holiday, but even though I had good intentions about finding a WiFi hotspot, in the end I just wrote up one bit of a diary to cover the first week we were away.

Tabbouleh

This meal was all about the tabbouleh, the lamb and olives were just accompaniments.

Chicken in a tomato, smoked bacon and cream sauce

I wrote yesterday about the lovely Gloucester Old Spot pork chops I bought in Source in St Nicholas’ market in central Bristol. Well, while in there, I also bought two lovely plump free-range chicken breasts.

I cooked them today in a rich sauce of tomato passata, smoked bacon lardons, minced onions and garlic, white wine and cream.

First, I cooked the chicken skin side down in olive oil and butter, removed them and then sautéed the onion, garlic and lardons in the same pan, adding a splash of white wine, salt and pepper and some tomato passata.

I cooked this down for a few minutes and then returned the chicken to the pan and cooked the dish on a low heat until the chicken was cooked.

At this point I added some chopped parsley and some cream and cooked this for a minute or two longer until the sauce was nicely amalgamated.

I served this with steamed spinach and new potatoes, garnished with more parsley.

We drank a bottle of Loire Valley red wine, Domaine des Mailloches 2008 AOC Bourgueil, with this dish.

I have written elsewhere about the AOC Bourgueil wines and this was a typical example of how well the Cabernet Franc grape can do when planted in the right environment; fruity but dry and with some nice tannin and acidity it is a wine that will keep for a few years more while still being a delicious wine already.