Petite Marmite — The Bourgeois Pot-au-Feu

Ingredients

• 500 g beef shin or short rib
• 500 g oxtail
• 500 g half chicken or chicken carcass
• 3 litres cold water
• 1 onion, peeled, stuck with cloves (clou de girofle)
• 1 bouquet garni
• 1 tsp salt, to season the pot; gros sel for service
• Vegetables
• 200 g turnips, turned into olive shapes
• 200 g carrots, turned into olive shapes
• 2 leeks, trimmed, tied in bundles
• 2 celery stalks
• 4 cabbage leaves, blanched separately before adding
• Marrow bones
• 4 marrow bones, ends sealed with a flour-and-water paste
• For the paste
• 50 g plain flour, mixed with water to a stiff paste for sealing bones
• To serve
• 4 bread rounds, toasted until very dry, rubbed with garlic
• 1 tsp gros sel
• 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 100 g cornichons

Method

1. 1
   Place the beef shin or short rib, oxtail, and chicken into a large pot. Cover with 3 litres of cold water. Set over a low flame and bring very gradually to a simmer — this slow rise extracts maximum flavour and allows impurities to coagulate at the surface. The pot is ready to skim when a grey foam begins to gather.
2. 2
   Skim meticulously for the first 20 to 30 minutes, removing all grey foam and fat as it rises. This is the step on which the dish lives or dies: impurities left in the pot cloud the broth permanently and no subsequent measure will restore its clarity. Continue until the surface runs clean.
3. 3
   Add the clou de girofle (onion stuck with cloves), the bouquet garni, and salt. Reduce the heat to the gentlest possible simmer — the surface should barely tremble. Maintain this for 3 hours. A vigorous boil emulsifies fat into the broth and produces a cloudy, greasy result.
4. 4
   One hour before the end of cooking, begin adding the vegetables in stages. Add the turned turnips and carrots first; they require the longest time. After 20 minutes add the leeks, tied in their bundles. Add the celery shortly after. The cabbage leaves, blanched separately in boiling salted water to remove bitterness, go in last among the long-cooking vegetables. Each stage is done when a skewer meets no resistance.
5. 5
   In the final 20 minutes, seal the ends of the marrow bones firmly with a stiff flour-and-water paste and lower them into the simmering broth. The paste prevents the marrow from escaping into the liquid. The bones are ready when the marrow has just softened and yields to a thin skewer pushed through the centre.
6. 6
   Lift the meats and slice the beef; separate the chicken into pieces. Arrange sliced beef, chicken, and turned vegetables with care in individual earthenware marmite pots. Stand one sealed marrow bone upright in each pot. Strain the broth through muslin for ultimate clarity, then ladle it, golden and deeply fragrant, over the contents of each pot. The finished broth should carry a full, round, gelatinous body — if cooled it will set to a jelly.
7. 7
   Serve immediately in the marmite pots, with toasted garlic bread rounds on the side — dried until they will soak up broth without disintegrating. Present gros sel, Dijon mustard, and cornichons separately.