As a special treat on New Years Eve I decided to prepare Beef Bourguignonne a la Barefoot Contessa as I'd received her cookbook as a gift for my birthday. Luckily the flat came with a Le Creuset dutch oven casserole so all I needed was ingredients including a bottle of good red wine.
Finding beef in sufficient quantity to do a full pot of stew is not easy in Edinburgh. Every city block has 2 or 3 small green grocers or Polish deli's but no real grocery stores. Going 4 blocks up the street we found a Scotmid co-op and a Tesco Express. By raiding their meat counters I found 3 packages of beef steak, depleting their stock by a full 50%. Both stores are 75% packaged cooked takeout foods, another 20% is wine, beer and junk food. Does nobody cook in Edinburgh??
Once back in the flat I trim and cube the steaks, slosh them with a good glug of red wine and prepare the veggies for the dish. When everything is ready I open the oven and discover that it is very tiny, totally filthy, and I cannot for the life of me get heat to come out of it.
I turn every dial every which way resulting in a headache but no heat. Getting more frustrated by the minute I retire to the lounge to cool down. With my trusty computer in hand I search the manufacturers webpage for help and SURPRISE, the FAQ section has several letters describing my exact problem. For some strange reason the oven will not operate on the Manual setting, it will only heat if you set it to start / end automatically. Go Figure!
So back to the kitchen, pop the Le Creuset into the oven, set it to auto start in 5 minutes and to cook for 1.5 hours. Set the heat to 250 as indicated in the cookbook and sit back to relax for the hour while dinner simmers.
Chris pops into the kitchen to check things out and calls to me "Mom, why is there smoke coming from the oven?". Sure enough, smoke is pouring out the back of the stove & we rush to pull the casserole out & see what's happened. Every single drop of liquid had evaporated and while it smelled delicious it should only be half done at this point. All of a sudden it dawns on Chris that I'd set the oven to 250 thinking in Farenheit, but UK ovens are all Celsius ! My stew had been simmering at 482 degrees!
We quickly dumped in my glass of wine, added another cup remaining in a bottle on the cupboard and opened another bottle to cover the meat so we could return it to the oven to finish cooking. Miracles do happen, when the full 1.5 hrs cook time had elapsed the meat, while overly brown in color, was done to perfection and was fork tender. We dined in style then turned out the lights and watched the midnight fireworks display on Calton Hill.
All's well that ends well.
