Showing posts with label Daube de Thon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daube de Thon. Show all posts

Daube – A Traditional Provencal Stew. Now on Menus all Over France.

                                                                 Daube

A Traditional Provencal Stew. Now on Menus all Over France.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

 
Daube de bœuf
With parsnip puree, button mushrooms, and lardons).
Photograph courtesy of tpholland
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tpholland/4122574973/


Daubes originated in 16th-century southern France, taking their name from the Occitan word dòba or adobar, which means "to prepare" or "to arrange." Over time, daubes have evolved to include a much wider range of ingredients and recipes, now featuring fish, shellfish, and white wine.

Occitan is a Romance language, derived from Latin and spoken primarily in southern France. During the Middle Ages, Occitan was a more prestigious literary language than the northern French dialects. However, there was a need for a single language to unite France and a series of political and legal decisions, elevated the ancestor of modern French to the status of the official language of the kingdom, gradually leading to the decline of Occitan. Nevertheless, the Occitan language still has its adherents.


The first daubes were beef, lamb or goat with the meat marinated overnight in herbsgarlic, vegetables, pork rinds, tomatoes and red wine.  The next day, with the addition of more red wine, a daube would be slowly braised until ready, and other vegetables would be added.  Now daubes come with a far wider range of ingredients and recipes that include fish, shellfish and white wine.

Successful local recipes, particularly from Provence, often become popular throughout France, and daubes are no exception. While beef daubes are still the most common on French menus, you can now find daubes made with wild boar, goose, duck, tuna, or other seafood.

In Provence, many restaurants will feature traditional daubes on their winter menus. Though each chef will claim their version is unique, they remain fundamentally similar. The subtle differences between them, however, are a source of endless debate among chefs and the local cognoscenti.

 

While the earliest daube recipes have been lost, the French National Library holds a dictionary by King Louis XIII's translator, Antoine Oudin (1595–1653). He describes a daube as a ragoût de viande cuit en sauce, which translates to "a stew of meat cooked in a sauce."

 

 

The original cooking vessel for a daube was a daubière.

Daubes were initially made in metal or earthenware pots called daubières. These are covered pots that were made in a wide variety of shapes, and designed for long cooking as the less expensive cuts were generally used for these long-cooked stews. The daubières’ lids were made to allow the water which became steam to condenses on the inside and return to the stew, which allowed for the long cooking time required. 

 

An 18th century French Daubière
Copia, Napa, CA, USA

Daube on French menus:

Daube à l'Ancienne – Daube in the traditional manner; beef marinated and then stewed with red wine and tomato base. The vegetables include onions and carrots. Dishes offered à la l'Ancienne are prepared in the traditional manner that also offers the diner a chance to ask the server what "à la l'ancienne" means to the chef. Do ask, I have been surprised by the variety of interesting answers.


La Daube Provençale
Photograph by skueche and recipe courtesy of the Comité Régional de Tourisme Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur


Daube à la Niçoise - A daube in the manner of the City of Nice on the Côte d'Azur.  Many menus in Nice are written in Niçard (Nissart), the local dialect, which is primarily a dialect of Provencal and Italian; alongside will be French and in the larger restaurants English. The menu may offer La Doba Nissarda -The Nicoise Stew.  Apart from using a local red wine, the Nissarde version often includes a local Marc or an Armagnac or Cognac. Nice is famous for many other dishes, including Salade Nicoise and Ratatouille.

 

Daube Gasconne aux Pruneaux – Beef Daube in the manner of Gasconne, Gascony; made with added prunes. The old principality of Gascony has an agricultural base, and at the center of France's prune industry is the town of Agen.  

Agen: A beautiful small town and the capital of the department of Lot-et-Garonne in Nouvelle Aquitaine. Agen is a walkable town with narrow streets and medieval houses in the center. Just outside, Agen are impressive chateaux, castles, fortresses, and some of France's most beautiful villages.

The Agen Prune is what placed this town on the medieval map and has kept it there ever since. Monks from the nearby Benedictine Abbé de Clairac crossed local plums with Syrian plums that had been brought back from the crusades. These plums could be dried without losing flavor and could be kept for a year or more; now, the citizens could have fruit in winter. The Agen prunes were on their way to becoming a worldwide industry. Dried plums, prunes, were historically very important for the city dweller and the sailor. The city dweller saw little fruit in the winter, and sailors on a voyage of over one week could only use food that could be stored.

N.B.: Do not get confused with the French for plums and prunes, as I occasionally still do. The French for plum is prune, and the French for a prune is pruneau (pronounced prune-oh).


Beef Daube
Photograph courtesy of NwongPR
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nwongpr/52681378329/

Daube aux Cuisses de Canards – Daube with duck’s leg.  This red wine-based daube is a local favorite in Lot et Garonne.

Daube de Canard

Daube de Mouton – A mutton stew; the mutton will be marinated, with most of the fat removed, and then cooked slowly with wine and vegetables as with a beef daube.

  

Daube de Sanglier avec Raviolis Maison – A daube of wild boar served with home made ravioli.  This, almost certainly, will be farmed wild boar; real wild boar would be sanglier sauvage or would be part of a "hunting season" menu, a Menu de Chasse.

 Sanglier:  Wild boar.  With great ingenuity, the French have produced a solution, and for nine or ten months a year, all the wild boar meat comes from farmed wild boar. Wild boars are enclosed in vast forested areas where they are fed, fattened, and produce the next generation. These wild boars are being farmed even though they do not know it.   The farm-raised wild boar herds are inspected, and they are far better fed and far healthier than the truly wild boars. The wild boar on many French menus, outside of the hunting season, may not have been very wild, but they will be very tasty!

On select restaurant menus and in butchers’ shops and supermarkets, you may find wild boar chops, steaks, sausages, etc, on sale 12 months of the year.

 

Daube de Thon à la Sétoise – A tuna daube made in the manner of the famous fishing port of Séte on the Mediterranean.

Séte: The largest fishing port on the Mediterranean and the entrance to the canal that joins the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.  There is probably a Sétoise version or a Sétoise recipe for every fish and seafood dish in the south of France.  Wandering around the town, I have seen menus offering Sétoise versions of Bouillabaisse and Sétoise takes on other Provencal dishes. More importantly, during my two-and-a-half-day sojourn, I did not receive one meal or even a snack that was below excellent.

The incredibly active Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's Prime Minister, decided to build a canal that would join the Atlantic, at Bordeaux, to the Mediterranean.  In the 17th century, the canal saved four weeks of sailing around Spain to the north of France, and the occasional battles with pirates from North Africa. Good roads connecting France from North to South hardly existed, and in winter, whatever there was became impassable.   At the time, there was an island called Cette just off the mainland, and in creating the largest fishing port in the Mediterranean, the island was joined to the mainland. Today, you would not realize that part of the town is an island, but having the fishing port in the center in the city makes walking around it a unique experience. The town itself has many canals, earning it the nickname "Venice of Languedoc." When visiting Sète, consider taking a motorboat tour of the canals. Alas, they have no gondolas. Before it was joined to the mainland, the island's first known name was given 2,500 years ago when the Greeks came and called it Ketos. Later, it would become Ceta, Seta, Cetia, and Cette, and finally, in 1928, the city became Sète.


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Connected Posts:

Agen in South-west France. Home to the gold standard in prunes. This pretty and walkable town is surrounded by castles and Chateaus and some the prettiest villages in France

Ail -Garlic in French Cuisine. Herbs and Spices in the French Kitchen.

http://behind-the-french-menu.blogspot.co.il/2014/08/garlic-ail-garlic-in-french-cuisine.html

Armagnac one of France’s two fabulous AOP grape brandies

Barèges-Gavarnie Mutton is a Rare and Tasty Change From the Many Excellent Lamb Offerings of France.

Button Mushrooms - The Champignon de Paris. The Mushrooms of France I.

Canard – Duck on French Menus.  

Cognac the Town, and Visiting Cognac and Tasting the Product. Cognac IV.

Herbes de Provence - The Herbs of Provence.

Nice and 'La Côte d'Azur'. Dining well and differently in Nice.

Pigeons and Squabs on French Menus.

Ratatouille, the essence of Provencal cuisine and Ratatouille’s Ancestor, the Bohémienne de Légumes.

 

Salade Niçoise - Salad Nicoise. The Most Famous of all French salads; Named after the City of Nice, on the Cote d’Azur, Provence, France.

Sanglier - Wild Boar on French Menus?

Sète (Sete) and its Cuisine. Sète is the Largest Fishing Port on France’s Mediterranean Coast.

Thon: Tuna, the Fish. Tuna in French Cuisine.

Turnips, (Navets) Parsnips (Panais) and Swedes (Chou-Navets or Rutabaga). Traditional Root Vegetables in Modern French Cuisine.

   

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Copyright 2010, 2016, 2025.

 

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