WHAT’S COOKING: Weekday Boeuf Bourguignon cooked on the stove top

We can make Boeuf Bourguignon for hours in a casserole in the oven, or we could speed it up slightly for a version done on the hob.

So many of us work at home today that we’re able to organise our days in fresh ways. Unless you have meetings or urgent deadlines, it’s possible to start work early, say, with a view to take a break at 3pm or 4pm to get a stew or casserole going for supper.

Boeuf Bourguignon is humble food derived from common sense. The dish was created by peasants in Burgundy in the Middle Ages who used red wine – which was being made there even then – to deal with the toughness of the cheap cuts of beef available to them.

The dish uses cheap cuts of beef, the wine that is made nearby, mushrooms foraged, humble onions, and herbs that proliferate. Some aspects of this will have developed in the ensuing centuries leading to our time, but isn’t it wonderful that a dish can survive the aeons intact and now be known and beloved worldwide?

That’s exactly how we should cook, using what’s right under our noses.

To dine at 7pm you’ll need to get this going by 4pm, but 3pm would be preferable. I often interrupt my workday to get a dish such as this started, then, once it’s simmering gently, get back to work while time and a little heat get the job done and the meat tender.

Because it’s cooking itself, it can be relatively unattended for most of its cook, but do stroll through to the kitchen now and then to give it a gentle stir and check that it’s not catching, or whether the heat beneath the pot needs adjusting.

There is more work to be done later, once you’ve downed tools for the day. The pearl (or baby) onions are cooked separately and added at the end, and the same goes for the mushrooms.

I took a tip from a friend and braised the baby onions in Old Brown Sherry for a lovely bit of winter-warming oomph. And it gives a cheeky touch of South Africa to a French country classic.

This recipe is a tad more refined than it would have been in the Middle Ages when, I imagine, everything would have been shoved into a pot all at once before it went onto a flame to cook while the peasants all went back to toil and till in the fields. Or harvest grapes. Or whatever peasants in Burgundy did in the Middle Ages.

1kg beef short rib or other cheap beef cut, sliced into 3cm cubes (trim and discard fatty parts)

1 bouquet garni of 2 or 3 sprigs each of parsley, rosemary and thyme, tied together with kitchen string

Boil a medium pot of water and plunge the unpeeled baby onions into it. After a minute, tip them into a colander in the sink. Leave them to coo