My Big Red Pot
Every time there's something to celebrate, out comes my big red pot.
This is a special pot ; this Le Creuset's cherry-red enamelled French oven is a speciality piece, to be sure. It is a ridiculously expensive, passed-down through the generations kind of piece. I bought mine from Winners (at a fraction of the normal price - I could never find any imperfections though, so... just the same to me).
Today, it comes out for my father's first day of retirement! I am immensely proud and relieved to see him retire. I'm making a boeuf Bourgignon to mark the occasion - the proper way!
I'm following Julia Child's recipe almost to the letter, using all the special ingredients, including bay leaf! I've never used bay leaf before. It always feels like one of those superfluous steps that can easily be left out when you don't have it. It's not something I usually even feel the need to pick up if I'm buying specific recipe ingredients in advance. But lately I bought a package of fresh leaves, and I figured I would just freeze them, cause there were so many, and I will just never bother buying them each separate time a recipe calls for them. I'm glad I did, because the smell coming from that simmering pot of bourgignon is really something. I didn't know bay leaf would add that much aroma, I figured they'd be so mild you'd never know they were missing. Wrong. What was I thinking? You only need one or two leaves, of course they're powerful! Good decision today.
I really like cooking with this pot. Something about the type of meals you make in them... Slow meals, meals with autopilot built in, meals that give you time to think, time to tweak flavours, forgiving meals. They're not Go! Go! Go! meals where if you don't have everything in order, you're sunk. As long as you give the meal the time it needs to simmer, it gives you the time to relax and enjoy the cooking process.
I also really like this recipe. Julia Child was an extremely fastidious, meticulous, dedicated chef who went through each recipe so many times, not leaving out a single step that might make it better, no matter how small. Gotta respect that. This one is really quite simple, but big on flavour. Small investment, big payout.
Well, back to cooking! Quick post today.
Have a great day all, and thank for reading!
A.
This is a special pot ; this Le Creuset's cherry-red enamelled French oven is a speciality piece, to be sure. It is a ridiculously expensive, passed-down through the generations kind of piece. I bought mine from Winners (at a fraction of the normal price - I could never find any imperfections though, so... just the same to me).
Today, it comes out for my father's first day of retirement! I am immensely proud and relieved to see him retire. I'm making a boeuf Bourgignon to mark the occasion - the proper way!
I'm following Julia Child's recipe almost to the letter, using all the special ingredients, including bay leaf! I've never used bay leaf before. It always feels like one of those superfluous steps that can easily be left out when you don't have it. It's not something I usually even feel the need to pick up if I'm buying specific recipe ingredients in advance. But lately I bought a package of fresh leaves, and I figured I would just freeze them, cause there were so many, and I will just never bother buying them each separate time a recipe calls for them. I'm glad I did, because the smell coming from that simmering pot of bourgignon is really something. I didn't know bay leaf would add that much aroma, I figured they'd be so mild you'd never know they were missing. Wrong. What was I thinking? You only need one or two leaves, of course they're powerful! Good decision today.
I really like cooking with this pot. Something about the type of meals you make in them... Slow meals, meals with autopilot built in, meals that give you time to think, time to tweak flavours, forgiving meals. They're not Go! Go! Go! meals where if you don't have everything in order, you're sunk. As long as you give the meal the time it needs to simmer, it gives you the time to relax and enjoy the cooking process.
I also really like this recipe. Julia Child was an extremely fastidious, meticulous, dedicated chef who went through each recipe so many times, not leaving out a single step that might make it better, no matter how small. Gotta respect that. This one is really quite simple, but big on flavour. Small investment, big payout.
Well, back to cooking! Quick post today.
Have a great day all, and thank for reading!
A.
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