Pot au Feu

Pot au Feu

Now with the temperatures falling and the Hub still on his soup trip, I decided to make a cold-weather favourite in our half-French household : the Pot au Feu.

It literally means pot on the fire. And kills many birds with one pot stone, providing one with a broth, meat and vegetables and probably also a few meals in the days to follow.

In France where one can easily find different cuts of beef, it is normal for a pot au feu to contain meat of different textures to provide a really rich and flavourful soup e.g. the cheeks, the collar, the tail, tender cuts like the bavette, the chest, the leg, the bone marrow etc. Out of France, most butchers only cut beef into cubes, steak or hash, so make the best of the situation and use whatever you can find. On this day, I made do with cubed beef and an oxtail. Hubby complained that I didn't use the bone marrow and have thus deprived him of his toasts.

There are also different ways of preparing the broth. For a cleaner soup, one would put the meat in cold water and start boiling it from there, either removing the impurities as they surface, or just throwing out the water once it has started boiling, cleaning the pot, rinsing the meat and starting over again. For a more flavourful meat, you'll have to put the meat into the water only once it has started boiling. That will seal the juices in the meat. I divided my meat into 2 and employed both methods. Cook the meat for at least 3 hours.

The second part of the cooking involves the vegetables. One usually uses carrots, turnips, leeks, clove-studded onions, garlic, bouquet garni (bay leaves, thyme, parsley etc), celery, green cabbage, potatoes...I say that this is a dish that requires some time and patience to prepare as I do not usually dump my vegetables into the stock, but cook them batch by batch, respecting the rule that the stock has to be cooled (either by adding more water or by lowering the heat) before putting in the vegetables. Otherwise, the flavours would be sealed in the vegetable and it will not be able to contribute flavour to the stock. So I would do a batch of leeks (all vegetables cut into rather huge pieces), fish them out, add in the carrots and repeat the process with the other vegetables. I'll just put everything back on top of the broth 20 minutes before serving so as to heat them up.

The green cabbage and potatoes however have to be dealt with differently. I'll blanch the cabbage in a separate pot so as to remove any bitter taste, before adding it into the soup with the rest of the cooked vegetables. The potatoes I'll steam them on top of the simmering broth (my pasta pot comes with a steamer) and serve together with the meat and other vegetables with sea salt, pickled cucumbers/onions and mustard.

In fact one normally eats the dish in several instalments. First the broth, followed by the bone marrow on buttered toasts and coarse sea salt. Then you attack the meat and the vegetables with pickles, mustard, currant jelly etc. Personally I always just eat my meat and vegetables with the broth.

The leftover meat and potatoes are normally used to make a Hachis Parmentier (Minced Beef and Mashed Potatoes gratinated in the oven with Cheese) the next day. Or they can be served cold with a salad and more pickles. Any leftover leeks, especially the leafy green parts, can be served cold with a vinaigrette. The French usually do not waste the dish in any case.

The veiny green cabbage's my favourite part of the dish

Ingredients re-cap :

1.5Kg of Beef (e.g. oxtail, cheeks, steak, bone marrow...)

3 litres of Water

Carrots

Turnips

Leeks

Zucchini

Clove-studded Onions

Garlic

Bouquet garni

Celery

Green Cabbage

Potatoes

Salt

Pepper

I've been busy lately trying to catch up with my Italian homework and hunting for ECAs for the children. This is a logistical nightmare. I run around all day long, but somehow do not seem capable of satisfying everybody's needs. I've also met up with 2 different groups of mothers this week, one of which consisted of French-speaking mothers and the other mothers of children in Grades 5 and 6. In 2 weeks we will be meeting the teachers one-to-one and before that we'll be having a bake sale. Unlike French schools, English schools do always seem to be involved in some sort of fundraising.