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Cool
Stuff We Love October 2007
The Beef Bourguignon from Bistro Provence
It takes a lot of moxie to walk into a crowded restaurant dining room full
of people during the dinner hour, belly up to the bar, and say:
“I’m here to pick up a take-out order.”
Lucky for Ed, Webmaster Extraordinaire had it in spades…
OK, we’ll stop channeling Raymond Chandler now…
Editor in Chief, who loves French food, felt under the weather around dinner
time one crisp autumn evening. Webmaster/Researcher Extraordinaire was
hungry too.
“Do you want to see if Bistro Provence will do take-out?” asked Ed, knowing
such meals are best enjoyed around a table with friends, yet undeniably
tempted by the menu posted on the restaurant’s website.
“Let’s,” said the equally-hungry Web, dialing the bat phone faster than you
can say “beef bourguignon over horseradish-infused mashed potatoes.” (Which
is exactly what they ordered, having chosen carefully so the dish would hold
well and handle the wild take-out ride to Ed’s place.)
“This smells too good for plastic,” said Ed, chucking the plastic forks into
the picnic pile and getting out some earthy crockery bowls.
It was the best beef bourguignon they’d ever tasted! Ample, melt-in-your
mouth portions of fork-tender beef, just-the right-sized slices of carrot and
celery, not-too-many but just enough mushrooms, and fabulously caramelized
onions (or maybe they were shallots? They were so perfectly sweet, Web and
Ed couldn’t tell—and didn’t
care)…
It was all beautifully braised together in red wine, resulting in a sauce
that could, depending on your state of mind at the time, make you:
a)
weep at the gastronomical beauty
of it
b)
see God
c)
wanna slap your Mama
d)
wanna slap yourself
e)
or all of the above
(We haven’t even
mentioned the lovely, perfectly-flavored, just-the-right- creaminess mashed
potatoes atop which it rested. Or the fantabulous olive bread that
accompanied our order.)
Ed felt better, Web stopped complaining about the cold, and both were hungry
no more.
Bistro Provence
345 N. Pass Avenue, Burbank, CA 818.840.9050
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