Boeuf Bourguignon

Vicki and I had some friends for dinner last evening and I decided to to make boeuf bourguignon. It's something that I haven't cooked for a long time, but years ago I used to prepared it frequently. It's part of the basic repetoire I learned from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol 1. This book, along with her long running show, The French Chef (1962-73), founded my interest in fine cooking.

I love this dish, slow simmered pieces of beef swimming in a rich wine sauce with mushrooms, and pearl onions. It's classic French comfort food, perfect for the cold winter nights we've been having in Reno lately.


My dish is a variation on the Julia Child recipe. I researched a number of different recipes and came up with this one, which has some added ingredients. Basically, pieces of beef are browned, then slowly simmered for hours with bacon and vegetables in red wine. I also added beef broth, which is traditional, but some recipes don’t include it. I was very pleased with the results. I’m not sure it’s better than Julia’s recipe, just a variation.


We served the stew with garlic-celery root mashed potatoes, a classic Caesar salad, and for dessert, a lemon-yogurt cake with blueberry sauce and vanilla ice cream. The wine to accompany the dinner was Vino Noceto Sangiovese (2002) from Amador County’s Shenandoah Valley and a Cloudline Pinot Noir (2005) from Oregon.


Vicki is a fabulous dessert maker, but I promised to make the entire dinner, so I tried this Ina Garten recipe for Lemon Yogurt Cake with blueberry sauce. Everything went pretty smooth except when I poured the batter into the pan and popped it into the oven, I realized that I'd forgotten to add the eggs--quickly it came out, back into the mixing bowl, eggs added, beaten, and back into the oven. Okay, time was getting short and I was going too fast. Our guests loved it!