We Make Andre Soltner's Alsatian Stew

We had such a blast with our last recipe post we wanted to bring you another. So here's an old Alsatian stew called baeckeoffe inspired by an André Soltner recipe. Soltner, a native of Alsace, came to New York in 1961 and ran the kitchen at Lutèce for 34 years. The Midtown East beacon of nouvelle cuisine closed its doors in 2004, but the recipe lives on.

Baeckeoffe means baker's oven, as the stew would be brought to the town baker and cooked in their oven. The stew is always prepared the night before. If it were eaten on Sunday, it'd be dropped off with the baker before church. The baker's oven, having cooled slightly from the early morning, would be at the perfect temperature to slow-cook the stew. After church, the dish could be picked up and enjoyed back home. If the dish were enjoyed on Monday, it'd be brought to the baker by kids on their way to school Monday morning (great Fleetwood Mac tune). Kids would pick it up after school and bring it home for dinner.

The dish is the essence of meat and potatoes, with a pig's foot thrown in for good measure and unctuous jus. Here's what you'll need:

1 lb lamb shoulder

1 lb beef chuck

1 lb pork butt

1 pig's foot

2 white onions

2 cloves garlic

3 yukon gold potatoes

1 bunch parsley

3 bay leaves

Lamb leg bottom left, pork shoulder above that, and beef chuck on the right.

Cut the meat into 1-inch cubes..

..and place in a shallow baking dish.

Pork

Lamb

Lamb, pork, beef

Rough chop an onion..

..and add it to the party.

Grab a bunch of parsley..

..two cloves of garlic (left whole, but peeled) and..

..add them to the dish with the bay leaves.

Pig's feet enrich the stew. A pig's tail can be used here in addition to the feet.

We added one per person.

Pour in wine..

..to cover by half.

Hit it with salt and pepper.

Cover with plastic wrap and stick in the fridge overnight.

Next day, remove dish from the fridge, peel the potatoes..

..and cut them into half-inch rounds.

Rinse away some of the gluey starch.

Lightly oil a heavy pot and line the bottom with potatoes.

Transfer just the meat from the dish to the dutch oven.

Rough chop the other onion and cover the meat.

Top with the rest of the potatoes then salt and pepper.

Strain the marinade..

..and pour it all into the dutch oven.

This part of the recipe isn't completely necessary, but it makes the reveal ten times as exciting. Stir water into 1 cup of flour..

..until you get a wet dough..

..and use it to hermetically seal the pot.

Place into a 350 degree oven for 3 hours.

The flour paste will brown and harden around the edges. Use a butter knife to break into it.

Voilà!

Plate it up and garnish with some fresh parsley leaves and a crack of pepper.