Beef Daube

"Let's cook something," Hockeyman suggested upon learning I had Monday off.

We grabbed The Cooking of Southwest France and paged through it as Hockey Night in Canada blared from the television. You know you're getting old when the rookies are the children of players you once watched.

We happened upon Crushed Beef Daube for Early September. Granted, this is October. We're gonna try it anyway. This necessitated a trip to Andronico's for 3 pounds of bottom round, a pound of pancetta, a bottle of red wine, and a shallot. Other ingredients include parsely, which I skipped, garlic, one onion stuck with a clove, a bay leaf, thyme, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, and a pinch of Quarte Epices, a spice mixture calling for cloves, white peppercorns, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. I am not a fan of sweet spice mixtures, so I'll approximate.

This dish calls for making a paste of the garlic and pancetta, then layering it between slices of the beef. You then cook this concotion in the wine for six hours, leave it to cool, and eat it the next day.

At the moment the beef is sitting in the fridge, sprinkled with salt. We're doing the actual cooking tomorrow. Photos and commentary to come.