This week’s recipe is carbonnade of beef. I cook this dish often and is always tasty and successful, and I have adapted it from an extremely well worn Constance Spry Cookery book compiled by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume, which I was given in 1966 as a wedding present, being at the time a new and inexperienced wife-come-cook. I still refer to this book often. This book was first published in 1956 for the students at Wakefield Place where they ran a cooking school called Cordon Bleu Cookery School, so all the recipes are well tested and reliable and full of meticulous instructions.
Reading the introduction again I find gems of advice. Spry talks about cooking being a combination of science, art, invention, and a few other things; it calls for individual taste and latitude in adjustment of the recipe. She mentions another word to be underlined, taste – and she repeats it again for emphasis -taste. “If you won’t taste as you work you will never be a first class cook”. So true, and yet it is often hard to have the confidence and to trust your own judgment when balancing a finished dish. It does get easier with practice. Your tongue is the key; they say salt at the side and sugar at the tip of the tongue.
She also talks about the influence of good food in bringing up children, its importance in building up of strong people and the contribution it may make to the harmonious running of a home.
Although our lives have changed dramatically since 1956, I can’t help feel we are all missing something in our daily lives. All the instant gratification we get with all our kitchen gadgets and cooking television shows does not necessarily give us training for home life and civilised living, which is what Constance Spry, was on about.
Carbonnade of beef
1 kg braising beef
1-2 tbsp dripping or olive oil
2 onions
1 tbsp flour
2 cloves of garlic crushed with salt
330ml brown ale
500ml hot water
a bouquet garni (bay leaf, thyme, parsley)
seasoning of salt and pepper, a pinch of nutmeg and of sugar
a dash of vinegar (optional)
4-5 squares of bread, 1/4 inch thick and about 2 inches square, with crusts removed, or slices of French stick with the crust left on
French mustard
Cut the meat into large squares. Heat the dripping in a stew-pan, put in the meat and colour on both sides. Cut onions in thin slices, add to the pan and allow to brown well. Pour off a little of the fat, dust with the flour, and add garlic. Add hot water to the beer, pour on the beef, add the bouquet, and season with salt and pepper, nutmeg, sugar, and vinegar. Place all in a casserole dish with a tight fitting lid, and cook gently in the oven for about one and a half hours. Fifteen minutes before serving skim off any surface fat from the gravy and pour the fat on to the squares of bread. Spread these thickly with a good French mustard and place on top of the pot, pushing the bread down below the surface ensuring that it is soaked with gravy. It will float again to the to the top. Remove the lid and put back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes, or until it is a good brown.
This recipe has been adapted from The Constance Spry Cookery Book by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume.