in these tough economic times….

Posted on | December 29, 2008 | No Comments

a dear friend gave me a copy of elizabeth david’s french provincial cooking recently.
it’s absolutely jam-packed with wonderful ways to prepare offal and cheap cuts of meat, along with the truffles and lobsters and scallops and veal.
in the spirit of recession, i decided to braise up some shin beef.

i got six big slices of shin beef for $8.95 a kilo (trust me, for meat in these parts, that is an absolute steal….mince will set you back $12.95 a kilo and more).

i floured the shin slices and pan fried them in olive oil until they were quite decently browned all over.
they got tossed into a big copper pot with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaves, 3/4 bottle white wine (i am off red wine until further notice), a lavish splash of worcestershire sauce, a trio of chopped tomatoes, a splash of balsamic vinegar, a scoop of beef stock, four fat pork sausages, half an orange, peel and all, a tblsp tomato paste and a great big handful of fresh herbs, including rosemary, sage, marjoram, thyme.
i added enough water to cover the whole thing, clapped a lid on tightly and set it in the oven for three or four hours at a middling to low heat.

the smells that issued forth from the modest copper pot after the first hour almost drove us clean out of our senses…ambrosial and rich and complex, let me tell you.
in the final hour, we hastily mashed some potatoes with a great deal of butter and cream and salt and pepper and sat around impatiently waiting until the meat was almost dissolving with tenderness.
there was enough for six people, so we have the added bonus of eating this again in a day or two…when as everyone knows, it will be even better.

recession cookery is all the rage here at present, it seems.
a few weeks ago, our host cooked choux farci for us….stuffed cabbage.
i asked incredulously on the phone if he was actually intending to feed us what sounded suspiciously like boiled cabbage and mince (because i wasn’t going to be caught with an expensive bottle of wine at such a meal) and was assured that it tasted better than it sounded.
and so it did.

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