Beef and oyster pie is an old English recipe that stems from the times that oysters were so plentiful that they were cheap enough for the poor to eat. Beef was not cheap but the meat used was not a prime cut. Many recipes use a pint of British ale in the broth. Beef and oyster sauce is a common dish in Asia, and almost […]
This is a very pleasant and nutritious soup for when you are trying to lose weight after spending some nice holidays. I found some interesting beef shank at the supermarket – my butcher’s is closed for a few weeks – and started by making a beef broth. The next day I removed the (little) fat from the stock and added vegetables, chervil and pasta. The […]
A long time ago, I left my parents house to study at university in the big city of Amsterdam. My mother gave me a book of recipes as I had already showed signs that I would not be eating pizzas and French fries all the time but actually do some cooking. In my first student room – a rented room with a family in the […]
Here we have a culinary and national identity conundrum. Let’s start by saying that oxtail soup is a hearty winter dish using relatively cheap ingredients. Personally, I always associate oxtail soup with England, so my French version replaced the porto with a Banyuls and added some root vegetables that do not enter in the original recipe. But what is the original recipe?
A hearty soup is a great dish for Autumn. This is a variation on a recipe for a clear beef soup with kale, principally because there was no kale available on the market. After making the broth, I was supposed to dispose of the beef. Instead, I used it for another preparation.
Mirepoix is a city in the southwest of France, in the Ariège region. It is also the name given to a certain style of finely chopping vegetables and herbs to go into a soup or stew. I have an old aunt living near that city and when I visit her I usually cook a dish she can keep in her freezer and use for several […]
As Spring is late in coming, I have made some dishes for colder times such as this beef stew, which is a variation on the well-known, but not always well-made, bœuf Bourguignon. These hearty dishes take a lot of time to cook and are often rather fat. However, you control the fat content yourself by using leaner pieces of beef or by cutting away the […]
Soto is an Indonesian soup and can be made with various ingredients. Here I used rib of beef, because it was on offer, and a soto spicy mix from the Dutch Koningsvogel brand. You can also make your own soto mix. Rib of beef is rather fat and it is advisable to let the beef broth cool overnight so that you can scoop off the fat the […]
The ‘cauldron on the fire’ is a French winter dish with a very long history. The name evokes a large cauldron with water hanging above a wood fire in which meat and winter vegetables are slowly cooked The methods of cooking have changed but in modern France too, this hearty dish remains popular in autumn and winter and supermarkets sell special meat and vegetable packs. […]