They keep going on and on about it, but it's never for sale anywhere, and when one tries to find a recipe for it they are all pretty much the same. I found some reduced in Waitrose yesterday and today I cooked this - my version of the stew, feeds 4 terribly well. As pictures of the cheeks might offend vegetarian sensibilities, I draw your attention to cut No. 18 on the handy chart below. I'd also like to mention No.16 - what we call shoulder, and I think the French call collier - another excellent, shin like cut. Most of the other cuts are a mystery to me.
Use a casserole for this. Chop up two ox cheeks into large cubes, fry in one tablespoonful of olive oil until browned, add a bayleaf and 3 crushed garlic cloves during cooking. Remove meat, put 2 small chopped onions, 6-8 whole small carrots, 6 large shallots and a thinly sliced stick of celery in the pan, add 3 twigs of thyme. Stir about in the residual oil, add more if you are not dieting and you feel the need. Salt the vegetables and turn them until they begin to change a little. Return the meat to the pan, if you wish you could sprinkle it all with a tbsp of flour, I didn't. Add half a small tin (a generous tbsp or two) of tomato puree, a tin of chopped tomatoes, a small (125cl) glass of wine, and enough stock to cover the meat and veg and add pepper. Bring to boil and cover. Put into low over, Gas 2 for 5 hours. The meat will seem impossibly tough at this stage. By suppertime the house will be fragrant, and the meat will be extremely tender. Eat with, for example, pommes etuvees and broccoli or other green veg.
I can't tell you how good this was, although being on a diet may be bringing on hallucinations. I drank a very nice glass of Grignan les Adhemar with it. Delicious. See my Quotidiana blog for further details of this curious history of the re-branding.
Use a casserole for this. Chop up two ox cheeks into large cubes, fry in one tablespoonful of olive oil until browned, add a bayleaf and 3 crushed garlic cloves during cooking. Remove meat, put 2 small chopped onions, 6-8 whole small carrots, 6 large shallots and a thinly sliced stick of celery in the pan, add 3 twigs of thyme. Stir about in the residual oil, add more if you are not dieting and you feel the need. Salt the vegetables and turn them until they begin to change a little. Return the meat to the pan, if you wish you could sprinkle it all with a tbsp of flour, I didn't. Add half a small tin (a generous tbsp or two) of tomato puree, a tin of chopped tomatoes, a small (125cl) glass of wine, and enough stock to cover the meat and veg and add pepper. Bring to boil and cover. Put into low over, Gas 2 for 5 hours. The meat will seem impossibly tough at this stage. By suppertime the house will be fragrant, and the meat will be extremely tender. Eat with, for example, pommes etuvees and broccoli or other green veg.
I can't tell you how good this was, although being on a diet may be bringing on hallucinations. I drank a very nice glass of Grignan les Adhemar with it. Delicious. See my Quotidiana blog for further details of this curious history of the re-branding.
