The other day I ordered an unusual item on the menu of a nearby gastropub: Game Bourguignon. This is the French name for the region of Burgundy, and Boeuf Bourguignon is a famous dish in which beef is cooked on a low heat for several hours.

My dish appeared in a small cast iron bowl made by the famous kitchen equipment manufacturer, Le Creuset. Although the sauce was delicious, the problem was that all the various components were indistinguishable: the venison, grouse and pheasant pieces had been cooked for so long that I couldn’t tell them apart.

By sheer coincidence, the lady wife cooked another beef stew at home a few days later. The pieces of meat were browned with onion and garlic, and then placed in the oven with potatoes, mushrooms and a can of tomatoes.

We have a lot of rosemary, my favourite herb, growing in our new garden, so a couple of large sprigs went into the closed pot as well. The stew was cooked in the oven at a low setting for around four hours until the meat and potatoes were tender, and the whole thing was redolent with the scent of rosemary and mushy goodness. I had cooked some rice to go with it, and our guests attacked the stew with gusto.

In a battle of flavours, it is technique that defines the complexity of cooked meat, stews and sauces

After these two meals, I thought a bit about stewing meat and vegetables in general, and concluded this was an early form of comfort food. Actually, it requires little effort as it mostly cooks itself, apart from the initial preparation.

Most cultures have their own version: ours is salan, or curry as this vast category of South Asian cooking is known as. Kunnas and nihari are versions of this technique.

In Turkey many years ago, we once saw a waiter pull out a horizontal container with several sealed pots from an underground oven. On enquiry, it turned out to be a stew called guvec (pronounced guvech) that contained pieces of lamb, potatoes, tomatoes and aubergine. Actually you can throw in whatever vegetables are in season. I prepared it later in Karachi in a clay pot which went into the oven; my version had a bit of zing in the form of red chilli.

The Moroccan version is called tajine, and is prepared in an earthenware dish which has a conical cover with an opening at the top. This permits the condensed liquid to rise, and then slide back along the sides. Originally, households would send their tajines to the local hamam to cook overnight on the embers of the fire that had heated the bathwater the whole day.

Before the advent of gas, oil and electricity that transformed the kitchen, wood was generally the only fuel available. So while a fire burned in the hearth to warm the home in cold countries, a bowl of stew or soup would simmer away to eat with bread in the evening. And out in the open, hunters would cook game over the campfire that kept them warm.

The other point of stews is that they make cheaper cuts of meat taste great. The truth is that generally speaking, only expensive cuts like fillet and sirloin can be cooked effectively over high heat. Others emerge too tough to manage, so the best way to cook them is over low heat. But at the end, they taste very good. According to experts, the cheaper bits often have more flavour, provided they are cooked properly.

For restaurants, the advantage of offering stews is that they can be prepared well ahead of time, and also help keep the prices down. Eaten with a chunk of fresh bread, and accompanied with a green salad, few things are as good on a cold winter evening. And kunna with hot naan is hard to beat, too.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, September 6th, 2015

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