You can certainly cook beouf bourguignon on the stovetop. A lot of people do, in fact. If you cover it, you won’t have to add as much more liquid–especially if you use a piece of foil between the pot and the lid in order to seal it more tightly. (The enamelled cast iron pots have very tight lids, which lets a minimum of steam out, which thus retains much of the liquid. )

Cooking it your way does not make it inauthentic–all it does is make it so you have to do a bit more work. The whole point of putting it in the oven is so you don’t have to check it so often! Also, the amount of liquid that does evaporate from the cast iron pot in the oven is just enough to reduce the liquid to a perfectly thickened delicious sauce.

Your way is just a little more work. Julia would not have called it inauthentic at all, so long as it tasted good and is in the spirit of the original recipe and its ideals.

As for the tomato paste–I am sure it tasted fine with the extra, in large part, because you added lots of extra liquid. But here is an extra tip–you can put the rest of a can of tomato paste into a plastic ziplock bag and either stick in the fridge where it will keep for a few weeks, or in the freezer for a few months.

You don’t even have to thaw it out before using it, if you don’t want to. Just stick it in the pot and let it go!

Maria in Oregon – My e-mail is mashinka3@hotmail.com.