Provence & the Midi · Main

Daube Provençale

Intermediate
40 min
roughly 3 of 4 for cost

briny · rich · warm-spiced · bright Leads with a briny, maritime salinity, richness that coats and comforts, with a clean, bright snap.

Ingredients

1.6 kg beef cheek or shin, in 6 cm pieces
750 ml young red wine from the Rhône
100 ml olive oil
200 g unsmoked salt pork belly, in lardons
3 onions, sliced
3 carrots, in thick coins
6 garlic cloves
2 wide strips dried orange peel, white pith scraped away
1 bouquet of thyme, bay, parsley stalks and a piece of dried fennel stalk
4 cloves
400 g tomatoes, peeled and chopped
150 g black olives from Nyons, stoned
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
Salt and black pepper

The skills inside

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil Straining & passing through a sieve Marinating: acid, salt and time

Allergen screen

Found: alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Marinate the beef overnight in the wine with the onions, carrots, garlic, cloves and bouquet; next day lift the meat out and dry every face of every piece, or it will steam rather than brown.
Brown the lardons in the olive oil in a heavy casserole, then the beef in unhurried batches until each side is properly dark, and set it aside.
Soften the drained marinade vegetables in that fat, return the meat, pour on the strained wine with the tomatoes, tuck in the orange peel and bouquet and bring it to a bare tremble.
Cover and hold at 85C (185F) in the oven for 4 hours; look in once an hour and confirm the surface is still only trembling. 240 min
Add the olives for the last 20 minutes, then cool the daube overnight, lift off the set fat, reheat it gently and sharpen it with the vinegar at the last moment. 20 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes

Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.

Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.

Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes

Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.

Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.

At the Table

The Pour: Syrah (northern Rhône) or Nebbiolo
Also Right: The braising wine itself, better bottle
From the Taps: Belgian dubbel
Zero-Proof: Beet & blackcurrant shrub

Long-cooked beef trades bite for depth: savory, structured reds echo the pot; and pouring the braise’s own region is law.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Daube Provençale The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Provence & the Midi kitchen