Devotions

It was a final, long night of winter when I decided to make my first beef bourguignon. I had just finished watching Nora Ephron’s 2009 film Julie and Julia with my mom and sister and we were huddled at the kitchen counter, craning our necks over the holy scripture itself: my mother’s original copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Gently, so as not to dislocate the dusty pages from their spine, we flipped through the cookbook till we came to the page anointed with wine drippings and spats of ancient oils: Julia’s boeuf bourguignon. Wow. Is what I said, tracing my fingers over the words, printed in a curly script. Chic as hell.

In the film, both Julie and Julia cook in perfectly vintage Le Creusets. “Oh my God. I have just the thing,” my mom said, disappearing to the closet and emerging with an absurdly massive bag from Homegoods. “You have to take it,” she said, placing the package in my arms. Inside was a brand new, deliciously discounted red Dutch Oven. A Homegoods gem. I teared at the thought of her parting with one of her best finds, for me.

All the way back to Brooklyn, I rode the train with my new Dutch Oven clutched on my lap and plotted my meal.

Despite its Frenchness, beef bourguignon is not pretentious. It is onions and carrots and beef chuck – cubed – broth, brandy, and an entire bottle of red wine (Merlot if you ask the guy at the liquor store on Metropolitan and Leonard). Oh, and also butter. The whole stick. Julia places her beef bourguignon in the oven for the allotted two and a half hours to cook and what comes out is a dish that looks as gobsmackingingly delicious as it is bound to threaten a heart attack.

The thing about Julia Child is that she cooked with an unabashed ferocity. She did not shy away from littering her floors with onion skins, going elbow deep into bird cavities, and worshipping butter. Similarly, Nora Ephron, who despite all of her famous screenplays about love and relationships, wrote with a remarkable authority and borderline obsession about food. In an interview with Linda Wertheimer for NPR, Nora Ephron said that if nothing else, she hopes her film Julie and Julia will bring back butter. “You can never have too much butter, that is my belief. If I have a religion, that’s it.”

So, with my guests set to arrive for dinner at seven, I spent the afternoon chopping, sautéing, and simmering my stew. I cubed my beef chuck in fell swoops and felt like Martha Stewart competing in American Ninja Warrior (don’t ask me why). I melted down the butter and sizzled twelve ounces of bacon. I marveled at the wonders of a Dutch Oven, as I filled it with all the beef, carrots, and onions it could take. However, it soon became apparent that my vessel, my precious Homegoods baby, was far too small to accommodate the recipe (hence the discounted price). In fact, it was nearly overflowing. Begrudgingly, I dumped half of the stew into a second, smaller pot, and had my sister film me lighting the brandy on fire in them both. I topped each dish with a final glob of salted butter and finally, prepared to transfer the pots to the oven.

What I didn’t anticipate was that this would lead to a full-on war with my oven, as I struggled to fit the two pots onto my ovens’ one tiny rack. Eventually, I gave up, slamming the oven door and hoping for the best. This knocked the lids of the two pots together, spilling some of the brandy-merlot-broth over the edge of the pots and sparking a small fire in the oven. But not to fear, the fire tamed and I waited for my beef bourguignon to meld into that soft, tangy goodness that had made my mouth water in the movie.

As it cooked, I was struck by the familiarity of the smell it produced. It was a smell that promised a meal with depth and a ritualistic wanting of more. Meaty and buttery and rich, the beef bourguignon released something nostalgic in my apartment. Brisket! It smelled exactly like my grandmother’s brisket.

My grandmother’s brisket is saucy and soft and the tiniest bit sweet. It is eaten on holidays or special occasions, when there are cousins to catch up with and lipstick smudged on everyone's cheeks and you can’t hear a damn word that anyone is saying at the table. To smell it cooking in the morning, is to know that you will go to bed with a full stomach and the name of someone’s friend's grandson for you to remember.

While I loved the thought of having a holiday-worthy meal for no good reason in the little apartment I share with my sister, I worried that it wouldn’t live up to the grandeur of our grandmother’s table. And it felt, just a bit, like we were playing at something we knew nothing about.

Nevertheless, the beef bourguignon was just as spectacular as Julia promised. Incredibly rich and almost heart-wrenchingly soft, to eat it, felt, at least for me, as if something was being tugged at between my chest and my ribs, and begged to be lapped up with a crusty hunk of bread. The Italians have a word for this necessity – la scarpetta – which literally means “little shoe,” but metaphorically translates to using bread to soak up the leftover sauce on the plate. I won’t harp on the experience too much because I hope you know what I mean.

While it was not my grandmother’s brisket, the beef bourguignon fulfilled a similar, necessary craving to cook with gusto and indulge whole-heartedly. And even more so, to enjoy it around a full table. In an age of cauliflower rice and dairy-free ice cream, it is easy to lose sight of what makes a meal truly special…butter!