Last time we wanted to make a national food from abroad, and we realized we have not posted French food so far. If we think about that country and about it’s foods the first thing comes to our mind is slippery snails. Although we love all kinds of meat, we cannot think of snails as a meat. Boeuf bourguignon seemed like a much better choice. It’s made of beef, bacon, mushrooms, all kind of vegetables, red wine and it is cooked together in a huge glazed baking dish (called Europa tal or Pataki tal) for more than 3 hours.
Ingredients for 6:
- 1,3 kg beef
– 25 dkg mushroom
– 25 dkg bacon
– bottle of dry red wine
– 2 onion
– 10 dkg mini red onions
– 1 leek
– 3 carrots
– 6 cloves garlic
– parsley
– thyme
– 2 bay leaves
– 1 kg potato for side dish
Preparation:
First thing had to be done was the preparation of the bowl. It has to be filled with cold water for at least half hour before usage. It is prevent the bowl from cracking and also provides a lot of steam to the food, makes it unique.
When it was done we cut one onion, half of the leek, in small pieces. Than we added the garlic, the bay leaf half of the parsley, the thyme and the bottle of red wine to it. We cooked it on low fire for 30 minutes, took care to not let it boil too heavily. When it was ready we had to filter it. Only the liquid (the wine substance) was used in the future.
Beef
In this meat ragu the beef needs to be fried before putting it into the oven. We cut the beef flank to mouthful cubes and we put it on medium fire for 10 minutes. Few rotations were necessary, and we tried to avoid to let the lovely meat cubes touch each other.
Putting everything together
when both the meat and the broth were ready we emptied the baking clay bowl. It was time to chop the bacon, mushrooms, carrots, the other half of the leek, and the garlic and the mini red onions. We put the previous ingredients in the bottom of the bowl, salted it and we grinded some pepper on it. The beef followed it up and than the filtered wine reduction. We covered it with baking paper, put the cover on it and it was ready to bake.
Baking
The baking took little more than 3 hours (we payed attention to put the bowl in a cold oven and gradually raised the heat otherwise it could crack). No other liquid adding was necessary during the baking, because the vegetables leak some juice and the clay pot provided some steam. The first check on it was at 2 hours after the start, it was a great opportunity to check the taste, correct it with some more salt and the chewiness of the beef. When more than 3 hours left, we checked on it again, and it was ready to serve.
We served it with cooked potatoes (cooked with caraway seed). Some parsley left, we chopped it and put on a top of the ragu. The result was really impressive, tasty beef ragu. We get used to the taste of the pörkölt (we are going to show that too once), so it was a little unusual. The wine, the beef with the carrots and mushrooms, cooked all together provided a delectable taste.
Altough disbanding a great band usually a really sad thing, sometimes the fans get back something precious. Hungarian doom metal legend, Mood’s break-up was a great loss for the doom/stoner scene, but fortunately these talented guys didn’t disappear.
After the band split up in 2001, the members formed two bands, with similar music directions as Mood: Stereochrist (started as Supernatural) with a more direct stoner style, and Wall Of Sleep, which is somewhat closer to traditional doom metal. Stereochrist has three studio albums, Wall Of Sleep just released their fifth lp, called No Quarter Given. You can give them a chance, right here:
In 2009, three members of the original Mood line up started to play altogether again, as Magma Rise. After two albums, it seems this was a good idea. Here is an old Mood hit from Magma Rise’s first album, with Kyle Thomas (Trouble, Alabama Thunderpussy, etc) behind the mic:
