A recipe from the past

Suddenly had a notion the other day that I'd fancy some beef olives, aka paupiettes de boeuf or Alouettes sans tête. We used to have them at home quite often. Beef olives bought from the butcher ready-made tended to be beef wrapped round a sausage of stuffing or sausage meat, but Mother's approach excelled by rolling up the beef and stuffing together in a sort of swiss roll. This should make a dozen, which will serve four.

Ingredients

Couple of slices of rump, cut thin by the butcher.

For the stuffing, mix together:

1 Onion, finely chopped and softened in vegetable oil
The crusts from your last loaf, grated
An egg
1T chopped fresh sage
seasoning

For the sauce:

1 courgette, slice thickly
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1 carrot, sliced
Whatever else is knocking about in the fridge that you think might work.
1 can chopped tomatoes
A glug and a half of Minervois
1 red pepper, seeded and chopped
Seasoning
Crème fraîche

Method

Bash the beef out thinner with a rolling pin. Cut into pieces about 5" x 3", saving the offcuts. Spread each piece of meat with a teaspoonful of stuffing (breadcrumbs, softened onion, chopped fresh sage, an egg, seasoning), leaving about half an inch without stuffing. Roll up into sausage shapes starting at the end that has stuffing all the way to the edge, distributing the offcuts of beef among the olives. Fasten lengthwise with a cocktail stick. Heat the oil in the casserole over a high flame, adding a little more oil if need be. Brown the olives and put them to one side.

Reduce the heat and sweat the onion, courgette, carrot, red pepper and whatever till the onion is well softened. Arrange the olives on top of the veggies. Pour on the tomatoes, rinse the can with the wine and add to the the casserole (the wine, not the can), ensuring that the meat is covered. Simmer over the lowest possible flame for 50 minutes. Lift out the olives and arrange them in a serving casserole.

Stir a heaped tablespoonful of crème fraîche into the sauce in the cooking casserole, reduce to the desired thickness, adjust seasoning. Pour over the meat in the serving casserole and put it in the oven at about 120° so that it barely comes to a simmer while you prepare the potatoes or whatever.

We had it with a 'mishmash' - potatoes, carrots and a bit of swede boiled together and mashed with a little crème fraîche. I think Mother's recipe involved beef dripping rather than oil, and bisto rather than a ratatouille-style sauce, but I prefer the one-pot approach to veggies!