I’ve been on the lookout for a good recipe for beef burgundy for a long time.  For a while, famille Historiann was pleased with the Carbonnade a la Flamande recipe from Cooks magazine earlier in this decade, but quite frankly, it seemed like too much of a pain in the butt for me to do on a regular basis.  (Buying a special beer just for a recipe–seriously?  Too fussy.  I’m a proud cook, but not one who likes to buy all kinds of special ingredients for just one recipe.  Besides, having to remember to purchase more than 3 special ingredients at a time just leads to more trips to the supermarket for me.)

So, I’ve had to go and make one myself.  Voila Boeuf Bourguignon Historiann.  I took Jeff Smith’s basic beef burgundy recipe (from The Frugal Gourmet, 1984) , Julia’d up his rather slapdash techniques to amp up the brown fond flavors and umami, and added a secret ingredient:  fish sauce.  It makes so much more of a difference than you’d think.  I realize that Vietnamese or Thai fish sauce might be the kind of ingredient you’d buy for only one recipe, if you don’t already have a bottle lying around the house, but once you taste its awesome powers of transformation, you’ll find all kinds of things to use it in.  (And, it doesn’t go off very quickly, so it will be around quite a while.)

Boeuf Bourguignon Historiann

6 slices bacon, cut into 1/4″ pieces

3 pounds good stew beef, cut into 1″x”1 or 1″x2″ chunks, no larger

salt and pepper

2-3 yellow onions, diced

3 cloves of garlic, smashed and roughly chopped

2 T tomato paste

3-4 C burgundy or other good red wine.  (No need to break the bank–just use something you wouldn’t mind drinking, even if you wouldn’t go out of your way to drink it.  I used Yellow Tail shiraz this week, and it tasted great.)

2 C beef stock (canned is fine, homemade is probably better but be realistic)

1/2-1  t thyme

1 bay leaf

3-4 good dashes of fish sauce (perhaps 1-1/2-2T?)

1 pound mushrooms, quartered (most recipes seem to call for the mushrooms to have been sauteed in butter in advance, but I’ve just thrown them in raw.  Next time, I’ll sautee the mushrooms to see if it makes a big difference.)

3 T each butter and flour to finish the sauce

Fry the bacon pieces in a dutch oven or other good, heavy-bottomed large pan to render the fat, strain out the bacon, and set aside.  Salt and pepper the beef liberally, and over medium-high heat, brown the meat in 2-3 batches in the bacon fat (don’t crowd the pan), making sure they’re browned all over, and set aside.  Turn the heat down to medium, and add the onions to the pan.  Fry for a few minutes, then add the garlic, taking care not to scorch the garlic.  After a few more minutes, add the tomato paste, and stir to coat the onion and garlic mixture.  Let the mixture start to stick to the bottom of the pan and brown a bit–but don’t scorch it.  Add the stock, wine, thyme, bay, and fish sauce, stirring to scrape off all of the fond and incorporate it into the cooking liquid.  Add the reserved beef and bacon, seal the pan with foil, and then cover with the lid.  Bake at 350 degrees for 2 hours, then add the mushrooms and cook for another hour or so, until the beef is tender.

To finish:  make a roux with the butter and flour, cook it until it’s tan but not brown, and add it to the beef and wine mixture stirring to incorporate well.  Serve with buttered noodles, mashed potatoes, or polenta, as you like.  Tastes good the next day, and the next, too.

If you’re in the mood for another beef stew recipe, Erica at the good old days recently reported on an old recipe for “Hungarian Gulasch.”  The verdict?  “Dump everything in the CrockPot and wait! It turns into a sweet, zesty beef stew, great for a chilly night when you want hearty and comforting food without much work.”