Posted by Jim at March 22nd, 2004

Our church does something called “Dinners for Eight.”

The core idea is that 6 or 7 people are assigned to go to someone’s house for dinner, creating a semi-organized potluck. The host organizes the categories of people’s contributions (for example: salad, side dish or dessert) and does the main dish.

We hosted and I did the main dish. In this case, the main dish turned out to be “Daube D’Avignon” or something like that. It is a lamb stew. The meat is marinated in red wine and cognac, flavored with thyme, garlic and onion, cooked for 5 hours in the oven, and served over buttered noodles.

I replaced lamb with beef, but it is still wonderful stuff.

Unfortunately, you sometimes pay for what you enjoy. The juices boiled over and baked on to the cassarole dish, making a hard brown crust on the outside of the dish and a hard black crust on the bottom of the oven.

I dealt with the dish by soaking it for almost 12 hours. The water turned brown, but ultimately the crust came off.

I am still trying to figure out the best approach toward dealing with the oven, but, soaking (alas) seems out of the question.