Lucretia B’s Fondue (Bourguignonne)

INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

MEATS
HOMEMADE SAUCES
PACKAGED SAUCES
In my family, Fondue Bourguignonne (with raw vegetables as a side dish, to
dip in the same sauces as the meat) has been the basis of New Year's Eve
late dinner for 15 years at least. Yet, we tend to stick to just one
"recipe", which I describe here - leaving out the details about the sauces.
I don't know whether this has anything to do with the *real*, original,
French recipe - but we like it very much anyway!
Fondue Bourguignonne is a very sociable way of eating meat. One or more
different types of meat are cut into bite-sized pieces and cooked in a
special pan in the middle of the table. The pan, half-filled with hot oil,
is placed on a "grill", above a small flame. Guests are usually given
special plates, with different "compartments" for meat and sauces. They
cook their own meat in the common pan, using long skews (usually with a
wooden handle). When their meat is ready (1 minute or less is usually
enough), they take the meat off the special skew, and with a normal fork
dip each chunk in one of the sauces in their plate. There's a version of
fondue using broth, instead of oil - it's probably healthier, but it
requires VERY tender meats and it's not my favourite, anyway ;-) There's
also another type of Fondue, typical of Valle d'Aosta (a region in the
north west of Italy), which uses a cheese based sauce instead of oil - but
this is a completely different story... :-)
We usually start making our homemade sauces (my sister has another two or
three recipes, which I can't remember just now) a few days in advance, as
most of them will keep well in the refrigerator for up to a couple of
weeks.
In the afternoon of New Year's Eve, we clean the vegetables (carrot,
celery, fennel, yellow+green+red capsicum) and cut them so that they can be
nicely arranged in serving containers - we use glasses for carrots, celery
and capsicums, cut in long strips, and bowls for the quartered fennels. In
Italy, we also add what we call "Roman salad" - which is a "sweet" kind of
chicory I haven't found here in Oz...
Then, we prepare the meats. It's better to use freshly bought meat, as
defrosted raw meats tend to lose all the juices and become too dry to taste
nice. So, we cut the beef and chicken breasts in bite-size pieces,
discarding all the "white" parts. We also cut the sausage in thick (1 inch)
slices, and arrange the meats in three separate serving bowls. As all this
is usually accomplished by all the members of the family together, it takes
much less time than you think... and it's fun, too! ;-)
A few minutes before 10 pm (we usually wait for midnight while sitting
around the table and enjoying our Bourguignonne) it's time to get the oil
ready. We place 1 small potato, with skin (it has to be perfectly clean and
wiped), in the special pan for bourguignonne, then add peanuts oil and heat
the pan on the stove until the oil starts "bubbling" around the potato.
Always leaving the potato in the pan, we place the pan on its special grill
on the table - and we're ready to go! BTW, we use 1 pan for every 6 people,
otherwise things get too "messy" around the table ;-)
I hope this is what you meant - if there's anything that needs explaining,
just let me know!
Posted to EAT-L Digest  by Lucretia B <lucretiab@GEOCITIES.COM> on Jan 7,
1998

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