Famous French Food

This dish should be started the day before!

Ingredients

1 Kg Braising Steak cut into 4″ cubes
1 large onion chopped
1 large carrot roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic,crushed in their skins
2 bay leaves,fresh
10 black peppercorns
One bottle robust red wine 
1 tbsp Madeira
Beurre manie (teaspoon flour and teaspoon butter mashed together)
1 tbsp butter
Chopped parsley
Olive oil
Method

Make the night before.

Place the pieces of beef in a large glass bowl and add to it the chopped onion, chopped carrot, crushed garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, red wine and madeira, making sure that the beef is covered. Cover the bowl marinate for 24 hours.

When you are ready to start cooking, remove the meat from the marinade and dry it thoroughly on kitchen paper.

In a casserole pan heat 1 tablespoon each of oil and butter until the butter stops foaming and then add the meat 4 or 5 pieces at a time.

Over a high heat brown them on all sides – they should look really crusty almost like a steak – remove them from the pan and add the next 4 or 5 pieces, repeat this until you have cooked all the beef. 

Remove and drain the vegetables from the marinade, putting the marinade to one side, add the vegetables to the casserole pan and brown those too, then pour in the wine marinade.

Bring the liquid to a gentle simmer and place the meat back in. The meat should be completely covered by the liquid. If not add a little beef stock or more red wine.

Bring back to a simmer and place in a low oven (140°C) for 3 hours.

Check the meat every hour and if the level of liquid has dropped and the meat appears a little uncovered turn it  over gently in the liquid. Don’t worry if the meat looks a little burnt and don’t add more liquid – you need the gentle reduction of the sauce and the darkening of the meat for flavour.

Towards the end of the cooking time, gently poke the meat with a fork – if it starts to break apart when you do this, it is done.

Take the casserole from the oven and carefully lift out the meat into a warm dish and set to one side.

Strain the sauce into a clean pan and place it over a low heat. Let it to come to a gentle boil then add the
Madeira and then reducethe liquid until it tastes as strong as you like – the sauce should become almost syrupy. Whisk in the butter and flour mix and keep whisking until blended.

Add the meat back to the sauce to heat through and serve a couple of large chunks per person with the sauce poured over, scatter with chopped parsley.