French Daube Provençale Beef Stew with Orange

Serves 4

Preparation Time: 20 mins

Cooking Time: 2 hours

French Cuisine

This stew from the Provence region of the South of France is slow cooked in red wine with oranges, which give it a superb flavour and taste. This is a Guest Recipe courtesy of Florence Richomme of My Parisian Kitchen.

I was looking for a different way to cook slow cooked beef in casserole form and came across this.  We thought it was delicious and will be cooking it again.

It was worth the effort to candy the finely cut peel, which gives an extra dimension of flavour and the orange segments were added uncooked just before serving.

Daube is a provence term for preparation and cooking, in this instance, marinated and stewed. 

This recipe can be used with Wild Boar, other game, lamb, mutton or veal.

Ideally, one would marinate overnight, but to simply combine the ingredients and to cook this on the day works beautifully.

Perfect served with creamy mashed potato and a green vegetable like green beans.

We served this with boiled beetroots from the garden with a parsley béchamel sauce.

Ingredients

• 1.4 kg beef chuck or mix of chuck and beef cheek, large cubes
• 2-3 tablespoons of plain flour to dust the beef
• 75 cl red wine (I used 2 large glasses!)
• 2 oranges
• 2 large carrots, peeled and finely sliced
• 2 large Spanish onions, peeled and sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 10 pepper seeds
• 1 clove
• 5 juniper berries
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
   
• For the Dressing
• 30 gr sugar
• 2 oranges organic, as we use zests

AND THIS IS WHAT YOU DO….

1. Firstly, put the peppercorns, clove, juniper berries into a pestle and mortar and grind down, set aside.
   
   
2. Place the carrots, garlic and onion into a pan and fry in olive oil for 5-10 minutes.
   
   
3. Pat the vegetables to one side of the pan and add the meat and sprinkle all sides of it with the flour. Fry on all sides for at least 5 minutes.
   
   
4. Squeeze the juice of 2 oranges and add to the casserole together with the bay leaves and crushed spices plus the wine.
   
   
5. Cover and cook for 2 hours.  I did this on top of the stove, but you could put the casserole into an oven at 180C.
   
   
6. Whilst the casserole is cooking, using a sharp knife or vegetable peeler, take an orange and carefully peel off the skin without the white pith. This is important as the pith is bitter.  Then cut into short lengths and then slice finely as shown in the image above.
   
   
7. Place the finely chopped peel into a small saucepan (preferably non stick) with 200ml water and 30g sugar. Now boil for at least ten minutes until the liquid thickens and becomes very sticky.  Remove from the heat and set aside.
   
   
8. Peel the two remaining oranges carefully and free of the pith, cut into segments and set aside.
   
   
9. Now you will need to check your stew to make sure the juices are not evaporating.  If necessary, top up with a little boiling water as you will want to enjoy the fragrant gravy.
   
   
10. Serve with creamy mashed potato and green beans.