The best of Britten

Boeuf bourguignon, circa 1964: "Cut the beef into 11/2in cubes. Heat the butter in a heavy pan and sauté the beef so it is lightly seared on all sides. Sprinkle with flour and stir with a wooden spoon until the flour is pale yellow. Add the wine, stirring constantly. Add the onions and bouquet garni, salt and pepper. Simmer covered for four hours, tasting occasionally for seasoning. Serve with a cabbage purée." (Comtesse Guy de Toulouse Lautrec.)

Is boeuf bourguignon a classic or a cliché? Probably both, and in equal measures. The dish flourished in restaurants for a decade or so. Then food manufacturers turned it into a boil-in-the-bag special and no self-respecting chef would touch it.

By then, sauces with flour in were suspect. According to Philip Britten, head chef at London's Capital Hotel, "We stopped doing them because they were always coming out like mud." In the intervening years other stereotypes have come and gone. Who would serve a cream sauce these days? Every slab of meat floats in a veal-reduction glaze.

Now fashion has come full circle. In the search to reinvent regional specialities, chefs are rediscovering stews. Marco Pierre White does a bourguignon with ox cheek. Britten produces an intense wine-based sauce and garnishes the stew with fried pancetta and glazed onions.

The thing to remember about this dish is that there is no single correct recipe written in stone. The dish is only as good as the ingredients and the technique of the chef who makes it.

Britten's method is his own, one which he sees as a reaffirmation of craftsmanship at a time when kitchens tend to rely on last-minute assembly jobs. "You may think I just bung things on a plate, but I can cook!"

Choices Of Meat

French butchers refer to stewing steak as "bourguignon". If you ask for a kilo, it will come roughly chopped and from assorted parts of the carcass including shin and it will take a long time to cook.

Traditional recipes have been more choosy. Sirloin, rump and topside all figure in well-known cookery books. Thick flank or chuck steak would be the choice of a good domestic cook who wouldn't mind the odd piece of gristle, but likes the succulent gelatinous texture which comes with these cuts.

Boeuf bourguignon can be prepared as a joint of braised beef. It can be cut into large or small cubes. In her book French Provincial Cooking Elizabeth David recommended strips "about two inches square and one inch thick". About 40 years ago beef was sometimes marinated in the wine. It is an option, though marinades are out of fashion.