A classic Provençal dish, full of Mediterranean aromas, made à la minute. Don´t destroy it with low quality ingredients, like Dutch beef or pre-pitted olives!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 6 € pp)
- 800 g LOCAL (better organic) beef shoulder cut in pieces
- 2 large carrots
- 12 small potatoes
- 8 small onions
- 20 black olives
- 1 can whole tomatoes
- 1 liter vegetable stock
- Salt
- Pepper
- EV olive oil
- Fresh herbs
First of all, we prepare the meat. The day before we pre-salt it and we leave it in the fridge till the cooking time.
When ready to cook, we wash and pat dry the meat. We preheat well a skillet, we add two tbsp of olive oil and we brown the meat, taking care not to dry it.
Then we put the meat in a Dutch Oven, we cover it with the stock and we let it be cooked, using very low temperatures. Have in mind that preparation time will be some hours.
During those hours:
a) We wash, peel and cut in large pieces the carrots, then we steam them till tender
b) We peel and simmer the small onions
c) We wash the olives to remove the brine
d) We cut the tomatoes in pieces
e) We wash, peel and boil or steam the potatoes, taking care to keep them whole.
Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock
Well, the time has passed and, finally, the meat is juicy and tender, as it has to be and the sauce has already thickened, as it had to do.
We add the tomato in the sauce, we bring to boil for some minutes and we check the saltiness and the acidity of the sauce.
We take a plate and we put in it some pieces of meat, 2 small onions, some pieces of carrots, 5 olives and 3 small potatoes. We cover the ingredients with a spoonful of sauce and we add fresh herbs (I have used a mix of mint, marjoram and sage), and if we want, coarse pepper.
