54Leacock.ca

preparation time: 2 hours (for steak to come to room temperature)
cooking time: 12-20 minutes (depending on thickness and how you like your steak)
resting time: 6-10 minutes (depending on cooking time)

The Ducasse slow-cook method produces what the man himself describes as “a beautifully tender steak with a richness that’s almost sweet”. Delicious as this sounds, the 1-hour preparation time nudges his steak into the category of things you’d hesitate to do for a regular weeknight dinner. Enter the Guardian’s Felicity Cloake, who combines elements of the Ducasse approach with the standard high heat approach to bring you a pretty near perfect steak you can pull off in about 20 minutes.

preparation time: 30 minutes
cooking time: at least 2 1/2 hours
emergency contact: stéphane

The provençale contribution to the canon of beef stews. Unless you own a daubière, this recipe won’t technically produce a daube, but a Dutch oven or any other heavy ovenproof pot works just fine. This can be cooked and eaten on the same day, but is much better if it is left to cool overnight and reheated gently the next day. It’s not worth making a daube in quantities smaller than this; in fact, multiplying these quantities by 1.5 for a 6-serving pot is really much more sensible as it keeps well (and, like all stews, improves) over three or four days and can be frozen for a few months. If you’re not a fan of the texture of frozen-then-thawed carrots, just remove the carrot chunks first.