Baeckeoffe – A Traditional Alsatian Peasant Stew That Made the Big Time.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 
A Baeckeoffe.
Photograph
courtesy of Joel Bez
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lejoe/5196062504/ 

Baeckeof, Baeckeoffe, Baaekenof,
or Potée Alsacienne –
A traditional peasant stew from the Alsatian area in the Grand Est
region. Baeckeoffe and similar-sounding names all mean a Baker’s Oven in
the Alsatian dialect. For hundreds of years, when a baker had finished baking
that day’s bread, the villager’s cooking pots would be placed in the baker’s
oven where their contents cooked while the oven slowly cooled. Each family’s
cooking pot contained whatever they had available, and when taken home, they
would be kept hot on the family hearth. The slow cooking allowed all the tastes
to mingle and produce wonderful stews, even with limited ingredients.

A medieval baker’s oven.
Photograph courtesy of Hans Splinter
https://www.flickr.com/photos/archeon/15317937928/

Today’s Baeckeoffe

Today’s Baeckeoffe is a rich stew and will include cuts of beef
and pork and sometimes lamb; there may be pork loin, a pig’s trotter, other
pork cuts, a cut from the beef
chuck,
and or boneless lamb
shoulder.
Some chefs will add goose and or Alsatian sausages. The vegetables will have
been chosen according to the season but will nearly always include France’s
favorite white
haricot beans, onions, carrots, leeks, and potatoes. In restaurants, a
chef will add an Alsatian white wine, that may be a Riesling
AOP or
a Gewürztraminer
AOP,
and the herbs and spices will include garlic, thyme, bay
leaves,
and peppercorns. Baeckeoffe is still cooked
slowly; the slow cooking produces the exquisite tastes and aromas that make the
dish so special.

Elsewhere in France, similar stews with slightly different
recipes are called a Potée, Pot-au-Feu,
Bouilli or
a Potée Boulangère. The word potée means a cooking pot, and a boulangère is a
baker.

Where is the Alsace?
The Alsace is in northeastern France,
It is part of the region of the Grand Est.
Map courtesy of About-France.com.
(The region marked PACA is
Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur).

The Alsace is in the eastern part of France’s northeastern
region of the Grand Est. French and German influences affect the Alsace’s
cuisine and
language. From the time of the French revolution, two departments, the Haut
Rhin and the Bas Rhin made up the Alsace; however, since 1-1-21, the two
departments have been merged into the Alsace European Authority (the
Collectivité Européenne d’Alsace’).  

The ingredients for a Pot-au-feu
Photograph Le Journal des Femmes.

Baeckeoffe de Poissons – An Alsatian stew made with
freshwater fish instead of meat. Today, saltwater fish and shellfish may
sometimes be added.

My own experience, and twice was enough, saw that the slow
cooking used to combine the flavors can only apply to the meat recipe; the fish
would have disintegrated if cooked for a long time. The Baeckeoffe de Poissons
was tasty but offered few of the subtle flavors of a very slowly cooked beef
stew. Stay with the traditional Baeckeoffe for a meat stew, and for a fish,
stew consider a thoroughly classic Alsatian freshwater, sometimes freshwater
and seafood, fish stew, called a “matelote.” The matelotes of the Alsace, like
the one in the picture below, include anguillle, freshwater
eel; brochet, pike; perche, freshwater
perch; truite, trout; and sandre, zander, or pike-perch.

Matelote a l’Alsacienne
A recipe of Pascal Lanoix
Photograph and recipe courtesy of
alsace.nouvellesgastronomiques.com

Cholent

In Jewish villages, a remarkably similar dish
called cholent was prepared for the Sabbath lunch.  In the Alsace, the Jewish family’s recipes
would be very similar to those of a Christian peasant family’s however, scraps
of goose would have replaced the forbidden pork. The two communities mostly lived side by side and shared many recipes; the pot of cholent would be taken
home from the baker before the Sabbath began on Friday at sundown and
transferred to the family’s hearth.  When
the fire in the hearth had been stacked correctly, the family would have a hot
stew for their Sabbath lunch.  

A dish of cholent
Photograph
courtesy of Becky  
https://www.flickr.com/photos/35694730@N00/2738330081/ 

More about the Alsace

The two departments of the Alsace were moved
back and forth over hundreds of years between France and Germany, returning
finally to France at the end of WWII. The Alsace borders Germany to the North
and Germany and Switzerland to the East.  In most restaurants the menu
with be in French with Allemand Alsacien as well. The local dialect is called
Allemand Alsacien or Elsässerditsch, but all the citizens speak perfect French.

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman 
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Copyright 2010, 2016, 2021, 2023 

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