Mid-Week Bolognese

Just to prove you don't need four hours of simmering and all the other guff that Italianistas seem to advocate in order to elevate what is essentially ordinary to the level that it is ...

You'll need minced beef, onion, garlic, Worcestershire Sauce, chopped tomatoes, tomato purée, dried oregano, mushrooms, carrots, beef stock, sea salt and black pepper, and pasta.

Your pasta can be any veg spiralized or julienne grated, perhaps something gluten-free which is what I'm doing tonight with Mama brand Instant Rice Noodles.

Take a large skillet and brown off your minced beef - no fat needed, just enjoy the fat that is already minced into the meat. If you bought extra-lean, well, shame on you; drop in a good blob of dripping to get it moving. Give it a damn good splash of Worcestershire Sauce.

While the meat is browning, chop up an onion, peel and slice some garlic, quarter some mushrooms and dice up a carrot. Bolognese seems to enjoy a lot of garlic, so for a pound of meat (for two), give it four or five cloves.

One the meat is browned, soak up all the lovely juices with the mushrooms, add the chopped onion and sliced garlic, stir through, add the carrots and cook on for another couple of minutes. If the spirit takes you, add a generous glass of red wine.

Pour in a carton of chopped tomatoes, a good squirt of tomato purée, some sea salt, black pepper and pour in a good pint of beef stock. Sprinkle the dried herbs over - I don't measure, just sprinkle over.

On a medium to high heat, cook on, topping up with water as necessary. Cook it for at least half an hour, or until your minced beef is not chewy. A good hint here is to cook through well at the beginning.

Once the Bolognese is reduced, cook your noodles. Mine just need 60 seconds with boiling water poured over.

Serve out, noodles down, Bolognese over; none of that proper Italian stirring the pasta into the pan, this is the British method. We don't do it wrong, we just do it our way. Fresh herbs, if you like; parsley, in my case.

So, reasonably quick mid-week meal.

If you added wine to the Bolognese, enjoy a glass with your meal. If you're just opening a bottle to enjoy with the meal, shame on you for not opening it earlier and pouring a good slug into the dish.

However you do it, remember, it's simple, quick, rules are there to be broken, but do enjoy it afterwards, slurping it down hungrily, noisily and with a huge smile on your face!

Coq au Vin [Snubbed by Escoffier]

Burgundian French - a simple stew of rooster in wine, lardons, mushrooms, onion and garlic.

Specifically, the rooster is an older bird with tougher meat than a chicken, hence the need to tenderise the meat in wine.

Coq au Vin is a rustic, peasant dish and I was keen to see what Escoffier had to say on the matter ...

Nothing! Nada! Nought! Zero! Zilch!

Well, so much for the King of Chefs, eh? Le Guide Culinaire has over 80 pages dedicated to chicken and over 200 recipes therein ... but not one of them details this classic French dish.

So, turning my back on the heights of gastronomy, I relied upon my instincts and decided upon a course where the ingredients and method are really pared back and kept true to the rustic roots of the dish.

Food

Using chicken thighs and red wine, spiced with bay leaves and star anise, slow-cooked with bacon, shallots, garlic and mushrooms in a chicken stock we'll have a simple, rustic dish worthy of any French peasant.

You'll also need something to thicken the sauce, since the traditional flour coating over the chicken is not going to work for us. I used arrowroot at the end.

Chicken & Red Wine

Chicken thighs, skin on. I went with three each. Many recipes suggest removing the skin and I understand why, but we're paleo eaters and not going to be at all phased by a fatty dish. Skin is very fatty and will release all that fat during cooking, leaving us with a bowl of chicken swimming in grease.

We can render some of that out by gently frying off the chicken pieces in a skillet. Gently, so the skin does not overly colour up, but sufficient to release the grease ... which we'll reserve in a ramekin in the fridge for cooking with another time. Schmaltz, essentially.

Wine. We want the acidity but not the bitterness of the alcohol, so ... pour about half a bottle (for two people served three thighs each) into a pan and raise the heat to boiling.

You can boil on for a few minutes or risk setting your kitchen on fire with a much more fun method! Strike a match over the pan and after an initial WOOF! you'll see a blue flame which will gradually die down ... when it's gone, so has the alcohol.

Coq ... au Vin

Settle the chicken into an ovenproof dish, like Pyrex or a cast iron Dutch oven, cover with the wine and push a few bay leaves in along with a couple of star anise. Leave overnight, preferably in the fridge.

Lardons, Shallots & Mushrooms

Ready to cook? Get your oven on and set to 150C (300F?).

Fry off some lardons or streaky bacon. Tilt the pan to collect the fat and scatter the lardons over the chicken.

Peel some shallots and add to the chicken. Peel and toss in a few cloves of garlic.

Pour over a handful of button mushrooms each onto the chicken.

Top up with a little chicken stock just to cover and grind some black pepper over.

Into the oven for a couple of hours with the lid off so that the sauce can evaporate and reduce ...

I prefer a couple of hours on a lower heat than one at, say, 175C (350F?) ... your call.

Focaccia!

Traditionally, Coq au Vin would be served with egg noodles or mashed potato.

Focaccia

I could ... but read a recipe for gluten-free Focaccia that I thought would be perfect. It was, or rather would be if we liked that kind of thing but found it very heavy, stodgy and really not to our liking. YMMV. Next time, I'll try some rice noodles.

Serve

Ready to eat? Our Coq au Vin should now be cooked, darker in colour with the sauce well reduced.

Skim off any residual fat from the surface. There will be some, since we have the skins on, but it won't be too much.

Spoon out the chicken pieces, shallots and mushrooms into wide-brimmed bowls and pour off the sauce into a pan. Heat on, add in some arrowroot to thicken. Taste. Happy? Pour over the chicken.

Yum! Sod the Focaccia! It was consigned to the bin. Shame.

The Coq au Vin was delicious! Lovely chicken, superb sauce, very filling and very satiating even without the optional stodge.

Beef Bourguignon ... Simplified

Regional French, elevated to gastronomic heights! Let's bring it down and return it to the simple dish that is it.

No frills, no fuss ... really, no effort.

It is a regional (read: peasant) dish and really does not want all the flounce, pomp and parade ... it wants to cook in a simple cauldron over an open fire, eaten and enjoyed by regular folks.

Ingredients?

• First, Beef, Wine, Garlic & Bay.
• Later, onion, mushroom and bacon.
• For serving, roots.

So, a couple of days before you want to eat, get the meat marinating in the wine.

Meat? You want beef that needs some cooking, but the wine will make it extra tender. I went with braising steak. Wine? French Burgundy ... this is, afterall Beef Burgundy. Just cover the meat in wine.

Add some minced garlic, a couple of bay leaves, cover and settle in the fridge for at least a day.

Total effort: dice beef and cover with wine ... practically nil.

The day before you want to eat, grab an ovenproof dish and toss in some chopped bacon and mushrooms, pour over the meat and wine, and top up with beef stock. Add a little ground black pepper.

Pop it into the oven with the lid on at 150C (300F) for 3 hours and turn the heat off.

At this point, drain some pickled onions and add into the Bourguignon. These are already "cooked", so don't want much more cooking else they will become soggy, but do need to warm through.

Total effort: chop bacon, pour in the meat and top up with stock ... later, add onions ... practically nil.

After three hours, turn the heat off and leave it - the flavours will develop overnight.

You could, of course, simply eat it now ... so prepare your veg, take the lid off the Bourguignon and let it reduce for half an hour, or so.

Back from a hard day's work or a good day's activity and you're hungry!

Turn the oven on to 200C, remove the lid and let the Bourguignon warm through and reduce.

Peel and slice some roots - carrots and parsnips are good - and place them in the oven in a roasting tray with some goose fat for an hour, along with the Bourguignon.

Total effort: switching an oven on, peeling and chopping some veggies ... practically nil.

Of course, if you want something different, perhaps mashed sweet potato, white potato, celeriac, perhaps cubed swede, perhaps sliced carrots, whatever, cube, slice or dice and toss into the Bourguigon, or boil on the stove and mash.

Ready to eat?

Serve out several generous spoons of the Bourguignon into a bowl and place the roasted roots alongside.

Leftovers ... especially gravy, simply pad out with cubed veggies ...

... here, squash and swede, garnished with some parsley and chilli!

Coq au Vin

Burgundian French - a simple stew of rooster in wine, lardons, mushrooms, onion and garlic.

This is a simple, rustic dish, so let's keep it that way - unfussy.

Straight to it ...

You need some chicken pieces, or a coq, if you can get one, and some good Burgundian red wine (Bourgogne, so Pinot Noir grape). Immerse the chicken pieces in the wine and sit it in the fridge overnight.

Retrieve the chicken pieces into lidded casserole dish and pour over some of the wine, making up the liquid half and half with chicken stock.

Mince a load of garlic cloves and pop into the dish, a couple of bay leaves and a good handful of lardons or streaky bacon. You can add in some onion at this point, or at the end if you follow my madness and use pickled onions - soak them in water while the dish is doing its main cook and add in at the end.

Pop that into the oven for a couple of hours with the lid on at 175C (around 350F).

Remove the lid, toss in a load of button mushrooms, optionally carrots and the pickled onions. Shock! Horror! I used tinned carrots and tinned mushrooms! It's comfort food at its best ...

Increase the heat to 200C (400F) and let the stock reduce for about 20-30 minutes, stirring through each 10 minutes.

Serve out into a wide brimmed bowl with some mashed roots alongside.

That's it! Told you it was easy ...

Daube de Boeuf Provencale

From Wikipedia: "Daube is a classic Provencal stew made with inexpensive beef braised in wine, vegetables, garlic, and herbes de Provence, and traditionally cooked in a daubière, a braising pan."

"Variations also call for olives, prunes, and flavoring with duck fat, vinegar, brandy, lavender, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, juniper berries, or orange peel."

Daube does takes some preparation ...

One day in advance, get the meat marinating in red wine - diced beef. Follow the Chef's rule that you should only ever cook with wine that you would be happy to drink. Would be ... if drinking alcohol is not within your paleo template, you don't have to drink it. Fear not! Once in the oven, the alcohol is cooked out.

I went with Cabernet Sauvignon from Languedoc, the region right next to Provence. Good wine, which I am more than happy drinking!

Place the beef in a dish, along with some diced streaky bacon or lardons, some thyme, sage, maybe fennel, even anchovy for salty pungency and certainly some minced garlic. The meat will npw marinate happily covered in the fridge until you come to cook it.

On the cooking day, a good couple of hours in advance of meal time, pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Collect the marinated meat from the juices and sear in a hot frying pan. Any liquid should be poured back into the bowl of juices so the meat does not cook in steam - we want it browned.

You may need to do this in stages, but once the meat is browned, transfer it to a lidded ovenproof dish.

Peel and chop a few shallots, slice some carrot and add to the ovenproof dish along with a couple of bay leaves, some black pepper and more garlic, the cloves simply halved this time.

Zest some orange peel into the mix, too, and add any of those optional aromatic flavours like prunes, lavender, nutmeg and cinnamon at this stage.

For the roux, melt a little lard or dripping in the pan and sprinkle over arrowroot. Allow the arrowroot to colour slightly, then de-glaze along with all the meat flavour in the pan with the reserved marinating juices.

You will notice that the juice is especially meaty as the wine has tenderised the meat overnight and small particles of meat will be in the juice.

Pour into the ovenproof dish and place in the oven at 180C for a couple of hours, removing the lid after one hour for the sauce to reduce and colour up.

Take care to stir the Daube a few times throughout this last hour and maybe 20 minutes before serving, scatter in some green olives.

Serve out with some greens, or more traditionally, with boiled white rice or frites, fried in goose fat or lard; enjoy with a glass of the same wine you used to marinate. Garnish with parsley.