Jachtschotel (Dutch Hunter's Casserole)

In my grandmother's second notebook, jachtschotel lived in the useful pages, not the festive ones. That tells you something. The dish had enough dignity for company and enough sense for Monday, which is a very Dutch kind of elegance. You took the meat left from Sunday, stretched it with onion, sharpened it with apple, covered it with potato, and let the oven do the polite finishing.

The name already tells you where it wants to stand: jacht is hunt, schotel is dish. Once, that might have meant game from the field, hare or venison under a roof of potato. In ordinary Dutch kitchens it became beef, because ordinary Dutch kitchens have always been better at survival than theatre. But let me tell you a secret: the apple is not decoration. It is the hinge. Its tartness cuts the richness of the meat and keeps the casserole from becoming merely brown on brown, which is a danger in our national palette (culinary and otherwise).

There is a cousin called filosoof, philosopher, often made when the apple is left out. Why a philosopher should be denied fruit, I leave to the philosophers. For jachtschotel, keep the apple. Braise the beef until it gives way, cook the onions until sweet, and mash the potatoes plainly with butter and milk. Hou het altijd simpel, always keep it simple. A dish like this doesn't ask you to impress it. It asks you to remember what a household can do with what is already there.