Carbonnade à la Flamande: give your stew a Flemish makeover

‘Casseroles,’ Julia Child wrote to her long-term penpal Avi DeVotos, ‘I even hate the name, as it always implies to me some god awful mess.’ On this, Julia and I are in full agreement: I have a real problem with the word ‘casserole’. And ‘stew’ for that matter. Both of them sound so unappetising, so school dinners. But Child and I are also aligned in our hypocrisy, because actually, deep down, I love a casserole, as long as you call it anything else.

Like me, despite her vocal opposition to the casserole, Child loved bourguignons and carbonnades, coq au vin and poulet poele à l’estragon, and wrote about them with enthusiasm and appetite. Of course, all of these are casseroles, just with fancy (or specific) names. I’m aware then, of how silly – and, frankly, pretentious – it is to object to the term. But the word is so off-putting. It sounds slimy to me, gloopy, and like it will probably contain some kind of frozen veg mix, and thickening granules.