The elements of Friday's office lunch:
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| boeuf bourguignon, resting meditatively, awaiting its fate |
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| Oreo pie, not quite finished yet |
Just a reminder: I normally wouldn't be doing the luncheon for February, but my coworker and his wife and daughter just got over a bout of COVID (they're actually all fine, now), so I volunteered to do the February meal in the Missus's stead. I'll also be doing the March meal, but very early in March because my doctor's appointment is at the end of the month, and I really, really need to buckle down (even though I realize I'm going to be, as they say these days, "taking the L" this time when I see the doctors*).
I've had boeuf bourguignon in Itaewon before, at some French-style restaurant. The resto used the eye-round cut of beef (called 홍두깨살/hongduggae-sal in Korean), and they prepped it almost as if I were eating Korean jang-jorim, or eye round slow-boiled in a soy-sauce broth. It was okay, I guess, but not great. For my version of boeuf bourguignon, I use skirt steak these days because, for whatever reason, my building's basement grocery loves selling skirt steak, which is a fantastic cut for all sorts of things: fajitas, carne asada, beef burgundy, and even lean burgers (add chuck to your grinder if you crave the fat). The skirt cut is lean but tender, and even in its raw state, it's ready to pull apart with very little force. Simmering it for two hours in wine and stock only makes it more tender. Yum. My basement grocery also sells pancetta, which was great for my purposes: I cubed some up and put that into the boeuf bourguignon as well, along with three types of mushrooms. I sampled some of my cooking tonight, and the meat was perfect. Everything tastes great. Per my tradition, the boeuf bourguignon will be served atop fusilli, Italian spiral pasta, which is great for catching sauce. I'm so ready to eat lunch right now.
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*In recent slang, the letters W and L mean the nouns "win" and "loss." To "take the L" means to take a loss. Suck it up and do better next time.
4 comments:
We use 사태 for our boeuf bourguignon, or anything that stems for a long time. Apparently this is the "shin fore shank." We like it because it is very lean and very flavorful.
I think the lean meats definitely benefit from the long, slow cook in boeuf bourguignon.
Ha. I wrote "stems for a long time." Where did that come from? Obviously I was trying to write "stews," but the "m" and the "w" are on completely opposite sides of the keyboard. Weird.
Anyway, 사태 is also great for whenever we want to make a ragu. I made a lasagna a few weeks ago with a 사태 ragu and it was awesome. Ground beef is for the lazy.
I was going to make a nerdy joke about today's schools and the STEM/STEAM distinction, but then I decided the humor would be too abstruse.
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