Boeuf bourguignon

Preheat the oven to 240C, 450F, before anything else.

Dice the bacon, one carrot and one onion; cut the beef into cubes of about 50 g. Peel the pickling onions.

Bring the stock to the boil in a small pan and let it reduce a little. Do the same with the wine, and flambe it if you want to burn off some of the alcohol.

Colour the beef in a little oil on medium to medium-high. Do not keep turning it; let it sear and crust before you turn it once. This recipe does not marinate the meat in the wine first -- in French families there is not time and it is perfectly fine without.

Take the meat out, put in the diced onion and carrot, and let them sweat a few minutes on lower heat, lifting the juices off the base without burning them.

Return the meat, stir, and sprinkle 25 to 30 g of flour over it.

Put the pan in the very hot oven for four to five minutes to toast the flour.

Off the heat, work the toasted flour into the juices to a roux consistency: that is what thickens the sauce.

Add the stock and the reduced wine, keeping the liquid just above the meat and no higher. Do not drown it.

Add two cloves of garlic, the bouquet garni, salt and pepper, and stir.

Lid on. Drop the oven to 200C, 425F, and cook two to two and a half hours, checking that the liquid is not evaporating away -- top up with a little wine if it is.

Garnish: start the potatoes in cold water with a little rock salt, bring to the boil and cook about forty minutes until tender.

Glazed onions: onions in a pan on medium heat, water poured just to the top of them, butter and sugar, covered with a paper. Wait until the water has completely evaporated, then brown them.

Fry the diced bacon in a tiny bit of oil until golden and drain it on paper towel.

Fry the mushrooms gently in the bacon fat until golden and reserve them with the bacon.

In the same pan, melt a good amount of butter on very low heat to lift the bacon and mushroom flavour, and stir in the garlic and parsley mix.

After two hours, lift the meat out piece by piece onto a dish and strain the sauce into another clean dish, away from the spent carrot and onion.

Serve restaurant style: stack the meat on a small dish, a little gravy over it but not too much, then the mushrooms, bacon and glazed onions, the potatoes coated in the garlic butter, and a scatter of the parsley mix.