Slow Food

My husband and I enjoyed a rare treat yesterday...a movie at the full price theater!

*pauses for all the shocked gasps*

Usually we consider full price theaters an extravagance, as we live just down the road from a discount theater. We usually wait until the movies we really want to see on the big screen to come there.

I could not stand to wait to see Julie and Julia. I've been eagerly anticipating this movie ever since I saw the first preview, and I was not disappointed. My only wish was that they had spent more time on Julia Child, who I find a fascinating figure!

In honor of the film and of the guests we're having tonight, I decided to attempt to make Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguiganon.

The first thing I did was gasp at how many pots, pans, and spoons it seemed I'd be using, so I filled my sink with super hot, soapy water.

It did not see terribly difficult when I saw the recipe, just a bit labor intensive. The ingredients are relatively simple:

Without the fancy title, it's just beef stew with wine.

I also used my food scale. 6 oz of bacon turned out to be four slices from the box of "Irregular bacon" I buy once a year for 10 bucks.

Julia wants us to simmer the bacon. Alrighty then!


After you boil it, you saute it...in oil. Clearly not a low fat dish, which usually means YUM.

Here's some of the beef, lovingly dried with paper towels. I've never heard of drying off meat until the movie/reading this recipe.

Then you brown the beef in bacon fat.
Both sides get browned...smells delicious.

Here's the onions and carrots awaiting their bath in bacon and beef fat.

It smelled amazing.

You remove the carrots and onions, pour off any bacon fat left (there was not much in mine, so I wiped it out with a paper towel) and coat the meat in flour. After that, you put it in the oven for a bit to make the meat crust. Mmmm....

This was the plate that held my beef and bacon. Ewww.
While my meat was in the oven (eight minutes total) here's photographic proof that I cleaned the kitchen up a bit. There was grease everywhere- I'm only halfway through the recipe, and I've gone through at least a 1/4 of a roll of paper towels.

After you do the meet crust, you add wine and beef broth. I ended up not needing the measuring cup- the whole bottle was 1/2 cup more than I needed, but I decided to improvise a bit. I bet Mrs. Child would forgive me.

Waiting to simmer, only to be covered and put into the oven for the next two hours. I thought about taking a nap, but first I needed to deal with the mushrooms and the cute (and pretty darn expensive) mini-onions.

I covered it and put it in my needs to be cleaned desperately oven.

I thought I could finally take a break, but no...I had to get the cute (but $$$) baby onions ready.

First you boil them to get the skins loosened.

Then you take the skin off.

Here they are browning. Smelled divine!

Next up: Mushrooms. This was the only picture I got of the mushrooms.



And...DONE!

We won't be eating it until our company gets here- I'll update you tomorrow on how it was. It took FOUR hours, but it *smells* worth it.