boeuf bourguignon

It's one of Julie Child's famous dishes. I tried my hand at it for our Valentine dinner. How did it turn out? Hmm...let's just say I didn't do it justice. But. That might be because our oven almost started on fire right before I started making it. I had our Valentine cheesecake in there and my springform pan was dripping butter all over the bottom of the oven. Picture this: kitchen and surrounding rooms filled with smoke and a dizzying smell that I couldn't escape. It was pretty epic.

So after waiting for the oven to cool down so I could scrub it out, I finally started the 4 hour process of the beef dish. And I had one more thing against me. I didn't have tomato paste. The recipe only called for a few tablespoons of it so I thought I could just omit it. That might have been where I went wrong.

In all honesty, both the cheesecake and the main meal turned out just fine and I would encourage anyone to try making it. It was definitely a learning process! Now that I kind of know how to do it, I think I'm going to try it again will the right ingredients. Ha!

I also don't think this is what it's supposed to look like, but I may or may not have skipped a step or two in the "presentation" part of the recipe. Come on Julia......I had already been at it for four hours, I couldn't bother with presentation!





Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have a piece of leftover cheesecake. Because it's YUM!