Boef bourguignon

As I've posted about recently, I received "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" for Christmas, and I've been using it to make some excellent winter comfort dishes. One that I've fantasized about making for a while is boeuf bourguignon, a beef stew made with red wine. I cooked braised turnips as a somewhat unusual side dish. The meal was very, very good!

I tried to use as few pots as possible, but I still required a casserole, a small sauce pan, a medium sauce pan, a large sauce pan, and a stock pot. The pans were responsible for the following:

• Stock pot: (1) boil bacon (don't ask), (2) boil onions to peel, and (3) boil turnips (removes some bitterness).
  
• Small pan: braise small onions in beef stock.
• Medium pan: (1) sauté bacon, (2) sauté beef chunks, (3) sauté carrots & onions, and (4) sauté mushroom quarters in two batches.
• Large pan: braise turnips in beef stock.
• Casserole: bake beef & bacon for two and a half hours in red wine and beef stock.
  

As you can tell, it took a while, but most of the time, the casserole dish was just hanging out in the oven. Trying to coordinate everything being ready at the end was kind of hectic, but the smells were amazing.

The red wine I used was a bold one from Spain that we actually picked up at a white elephant gift exchange, "Codice 2007, vino de la tierra de castilla."

The braised turnips were not bitter at all and were actually the softest, most delicious turnips I've ever had. They turned a beautiful golden color and we enjoyed them heartily.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the other ingredients. Except for the tiny ononsirtually all the veggies came from my CSA, except the tiny onions; The sliced red onions, the sliced carrots, the turnips: all CSA. And the beef and mushrooms were from a local farmers' market we visited this very morning. Awesome.

Everything was completely amazing. I like to think it was the super-fresh ingredients and the grass-fed beef roast, but then again, anything simmered in red wine for almost three hours is bound to be a little amazing. Oh, and we enjoyed it with some of the red wine that went into the sauce, as well as some New Glarus Snowshoe beer, a seasonal brew that was very hoppy and surprisingly delicious with the bourguignon.

Happy birthday, Dave - a day of meat! (We had lunch at the Brat Stop in Kenosha.) And scratch one more thing off of my 30 before 30 list!