Food on Film (& Beef Bourguinon recipe)

Food is notoriously difficult to get right on screen. Cooking and eating are both multi-sensory disciplines and to successfully render that in two dimensions is no small feat. There are barely a handful of truly great movies on the subject, films that genuinely manage to capture the reality - the purest essence - of the creation and consumption of food. Many fall woefully short for any one of many reasons: myopic direction, misguided consultant chefs, lack of realism, faux sincerity and the practicalities of filming all present challenges to the gastronomically minded producer. To witness all in one neat package simply sit through the terrible Bradley Cooper vehicle ‘Burnt’ which is, in my view, the worst representation of the hospitality industry ever committed to celluloid.

There are, obviously, some exceptions to this rule. 2014 seems to have been a vintage year: Jon Favreau’s offering ‘Chef’ has no doubt given birth to more than a few food truck businesses, not to mention a few thousand grilled cheese sandwiches and, despite a few minor mis-steps along the way, Helen Mirren manages to navigate ‘The 100 Foot Journey’ in a relatively accomplished fashion. The best from that year though is a wonderful Bollywood offering called ‘The Lunchbox’ in which a relationship blossoms via the medium of notes sent back and forth in a tiffin box. Genuinely brilliant and truly heart-warming.

When extending the list to include individual scenes as opposed to entire films, the list grows further. I remain dazzled by the banquet sequence in Hook where a previously empty table is revealed to be groaning under the weight of a fantastical array of dishes crafted in the imaginations of the assembled diners, and I was gloriously appalled and amazed in equal measure at Indiana Jones’s notorious ‘dinner of doom’. An honourable mention too to the magically expanding take-out pizza in Back to the Future Part II.

Animation also offers us tantalising imagery of the edible from Disney’s bowl of shared spaghetti to Studio Ghibli’s steaming bowl of ramen in ‘Ponyo’, the Japanese studio’s take on The Little Mermaid. Noodles are also a key plot line in the rather wonderful ‘Kung-Fu Panda’ and we’ve not yet even mentioned ‘Ratatouille’ which remains the single best film about food to date.

What these renditions have in common is that they make no attempts at realism. Clever directors know that only the imagined and fantastical can hope to compete with reality so why bother trying to painstakingly create actual food which can only suffer under studio lights and multiple takes? Far better to craft something that goes beyond what we can know and experience empirically and delve into the realm of the fictional to cook up delights that no real kitchen can compete with.

If realism, however, is what you are searching for, look instead at the works of the documentarian. Recent years have been a golden age for food documentary, fuelled primarily by streaming platforms. ‘A Matter of Taste’ released in 2011 follows pioneering British chef Paul Liebrandt for well over a decade charting the ups and downs of his career in pre and post 9/11 New York City and ‘The Last Magnificent’ takes an even wider look at the life and work of another trailblazer, Jeremiah Tower who cooked at Chez Panisse during the 1970’s and was described by The New Yorker as ‘the forgotten father of the American food revolution’. Finally, for some true insights into the passion and hard work required at the very top of the culinary world I can wholly recommend a trilogy of documentaries: ‘Somm’, ‘Noma: My Perfect Storm’ and ‘For Grace’ which should be required viewing for anyone who has ever cooked at, or indeed eaten in, a restaurant.

Edition-–-Beef-4.jpg — Beef Bourguinon

I was inspired to write this month’s column about food on screen by finally getting round to watching Julie & Julia, a genuinely lovely movie with food at its warm and generous heart. A neat sub-plot featuring an over-cooked boeuf bourguignon made me yearn for its warming and nourishing embrace, especially at this time of year when spring is still a memory rather than a prospect, the chill winds rattle the windows and icy rains disturb the dark peace.
I’ve tried to stick as closely to Julia Child’s original recipe but there is some artistic licence herein and most importantly, don’t rush this. Take time to properly brown the meat and vegetables, in the correct order, before allowing them several hours to get to know each other in the casserole: you will be rewarded with a depth of flavour that transcends the nature of the original ingredients.

Six slices unsmoked streaky bacon, sliced into lardons

Three tablespoons olive oil, or vegetable oil

1.5kg stewing beef (I used shin) cut into 3cm dice

Two large carrots, peeled and roughly chopped into seven or eight evenly sized pieces

Two onions, peeled and diced

Two tablespoons plain flour

One tablespoon tomato paste

Six cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped or grated

500ml red wine

500ml beef stock

Ten sprigs of fresh thyme

50g unsalted butter

18-24 pearl onions, peeled and left whole

450g button mushrooms halved or quartered depending on their size

Half a bunch of flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped

You will need an ovenproof casserole - complete with lid, large enough to hold all the ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 140 degrees. Begin by rendering the fat from the bacon. Cook the lardons slowly in a little oil over a medium heat for 10 minutes until the fat has rendered and the bacon pieces have begun to brown. Remove them from the pan and place in a small bowl. Season the meat with salt and increase the heat under the casserole to high. Brown the beef on all sides making sure to caramelise it well to a dark, burnished colour. Take care not to overcrowd the pan - do it in small batches and once browned remove each one from the pan onto a clean plate. Finally, brown the carrot and onions - the moisture in the vegetables will help to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Cook the carrot and onion, stirring often, for around 10 minutes until they have begun to take on a little colour then return the beef and bacon to the pan. Sprinkle over the flour and stir so that it coats the meat then cook to toast the flour for 3-4 minutes. Add the tomato paste, garlic and thyme then the red wine and beef stock. Bring to a gentle boil, cover with the lid and place in the oven for at least three hours.

The onions and mushrooms are first cooked separately and then added to the beef bourguignon for the final hour of cooking. Heat a frying pan over a high heat with a tablespoon of oil and 20g unsalted butter and once the pan is hot add the onions. Season with salt and cook for ten minutes until the outside of the onions are blistered and browned in places then transfer them to the stew. Repeat with the mushrooms in the same pan but cook until all the water in them has cooked out and the mushrooms have begun to caramelise and brown on the outside - they will have shrunk to about half their original size. Add these to the slowly cooking beef and take the opportunity to check the seasoning. Add a pinch more salt if necessary, replace the lid and return to the oven for a further hour. Once cooked sprinkle over the chopped parsley and serve right away with pasta, polenta, a hefty chunk of sourdough bread or mounds of buttery mashed potato, all perfect vehicles for mopping up a rich gravy.

(This article and recipe was originally published in the February issue of Cambridge Edition magazine. Read it here)