For my first effort I thought I'd start with one of the trusty old favourites that I made the other day for lunch with a friend: good old filet de boeuf Rossini. It's quick, easy, delicious and decadent; great if you're planning on buttering up your mistress whilst demonstrating that you are in fact a multi-talented caring person, or alternatively if you just want a really nice light lunch with a friend. Or someone else, for that matter.
Start off with getting the sauce Béarnaise ready. I have heard of people buying this, and for a fact I have seen jars of the stuff on the shelves in the supermarket, but then again I've heard all sorts of weird stuff, not all of which was true, and I've never actually seen a jar in anyone's caddy, so maybe they're just there for show and this was all just a bad dream.
Anyway, for a classic sauce Béarnaise you start out by reducing wine vinegar by three-quarters with finely chopped shallots, then straining it ... quite frankly I just can't be arsed going though all that so I make Bastard Béarnaise, and no-one's yet pulled me up on it. Take an egg yolk, put it in a small saucepan, and add an equal volume of vinaigre d'echalotte or, if you want, balsamic vinegar. Personally I find that this latter makes a slightly sweet sauce, but Sophie really liked it (plus it's the only kind of vinegar she has, which rather limited my options) and I have to admit that it actually goes rather well with the foie gras, which we'll get to later.
Right, you have the two together in a saucepan, now put that on a really really low heat and start whisking shit out of it until it starts to thicken, at which point TURN THE HEAT OFF because you really do not want vinegary scrambled eggs. Well, you might, but that's not the object of the exercise here. Whatever, the residual heat in the saucepan will carry on cooking the mixture while you whisk in the butter: as much as you think it'll hold, probably around 50gm. If you've done it correctly you should have a thick yellow velvety sauce in the pan: if you have a puddle of melted butter with eggy lumps or something ghastly that looks like a curdled bit of sick, you have done it wrong. Try again. (Recipe books all tell you to do this in a bain-marie. If you really like extra washing-up, by all means go for it, but I don't, so I don't. Then again, I also have a stove where "low heat" means exactly that.)
Salted butter or unsalted? Silly question, unsalted butter is the invention of the devil and has no place in the kitchen nor, indeed, anywhere else in the house - unless you have found other uses for the stuff. In which case, don't bother to let me know.
Assuming that you've got this far, it's frying pan time. Cut a few slices off the bit of home-cured bacon that's lurking in the fridge - preferably the bit that you slathered with maple syrup whilst it was drying in the cellar. If you've run out, no worry: either make some more - which does rather mean that'll be a month before you can get around to finishing the recipe, by which time the sauce will have gone off - or go quickly down to the market and buy some, or leave it out. It doesn't actually feature in the traditional recipe anyway. But don't use the stuff in plastic packets at the supermarket, it's very nasty, full of water, and probably gives your brain boils. Do without.
Okay, frying the bacon. Do this, let it get crispy, take it out and let it drain, leaving as much fat and crispy bits as possible in the pan. Do not eat them just now.
About now would be a really good time to go get another glass of rosé, and ask your partner/significant other/friend why the hell it is that whilst you've been slaving your arse off in the kitchen all this time they've not made any progress on the salad?
Once you've cleaned and bound any wounds (if you're in the kitchen, you have the knives, which kind of reduces the risks of major damage) it's time to open up one of the tins of foie gras you have stashed away and cut a couple of thickish slices off it. Don't slash your wrists with the sharpy bits of lid, and don't bother using hideously expensive stuff: a 200gm tin at about 4€ is just fine for this. Considering what's going to happen to it.
If you're now ready to eat, heat up the frying pan with the bacon fat and crispy bits in it until good and hot, then stick in your two slices of fillet steak. (And I'm sorry, this has to be good. Which does not necessarily mean expensive - M. Bourraoui, the Arab butcher in Faubourg Montmelian* does great fillet at about 15€/kg - and you're only going to be using about 300gm for the two of you, but don't try using another cut. If you do it will be gross and it will all be your fault.)
Now stick the crispy bacon back in there too, and cook the steaks until they're just a shade underdone - which will of course depend on how you like your steak. Personally I find "bleu" (very rare) to be a bit too runny, but anything past "à point" (medium) is a heresy, and you'll have the Pope at your door. Turn the heat off, shovel the bacon bits on top of each steak, and top them with a slice of foie gras. And, with great patience, let them sit for a minute or two. Take the opportunity to get another glass, and check up on the salad.
Finally, the moment you've been waiting for - stick one steak per plate and pour a liberal helping of Béarnaise sauce over the foie gras, which should have started to melt into the bacon. There'll be a bit of juice in the frying pan - use the spatula to mix all the crispy bits into this and then drizzle it onto the sauce.
Serve to general acclamation and with plenty of bread to sop up the sauce. And for eating the rest of the foie gras (because in theory - unless you've been eating it all this while - there will be quite a bit left over). And don't forget the salad, given that you've been bitching about it.
(There are no photos to accompagny this. Partly because it's not really that photogenic, partly because we were actually quite hungry, what with the wait for the salad and all, but mainly because I didn't have my camera with me. Unless you count my phone, which I don't, because I've never bothered to learn how to actually use the camera in the damn thing. Whatever.)
Next time, if I feel like it, I might tell you how to get rid of the burnt-on sugary black bits that inevitably form in your baking dish when you stick a load of BBQ spareribs in the oven and then get on the phone with Karen.
*Shopping street in Chambéry, France.
Showing posts with label beef. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beef. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Sunday, 22 March 2009
RED CHILE, with a side of decisions
[Roving Frangy reporter's dispatch from l'Ètat Unis] El Toro Market in Santa Ana is the place to shop for Latin American goods in Orange County. "Quien no conoce El Toro no conoce Santa Ana"—it says so right on the market. It's one of the few carnicerías where you can get a suckling pig (lechón—order a day in advance) and you can buy a whole pork leg there pretty much any day of the week. They have great piles of luffa for the shower, too, and mine was getting pretty ratty, so I made the trip into town. Once there, there was no way that I could leave the store without an assortment of dried red chile, which were just beautiful—not the crumbly-dry ones you usually find—these were still a little meaty! I bought a handful of Puyas to go with Pasillas and New Mexicos. Here's a pic (with my new luffa in the background!).
The drive home was time to contemplate what to do with them. My first idea was to work out a new form for "messicani," a thin slice of fatty pork shoulder sprinkled with mixture of grated parmiggiano, peperoncino, and salt and rolled tightly around a wooden skewer and cooked over an open grill. Although it's name means "Mexican," this is a specialty from the Adriatic coast of Puglia in Italy, and it's actually pretty unlikely that there is any real Mexican connection at all for this tasty version of meat on a stick. My thoughts were to re-invent messicani with some authentic Mexican flavors…
…but then I got home, and Adri says, "Oh, you're making chile. That's great! We'll have it tomorrow for lunch."
Okay, I'm making chile, which to us means a stew based on chile and meat. Sounds straightforward enough—but there are decisions to make:
1) Meat or no meat? Don't even think about vegetarian when it comes to chile. Yes, veggie chile can be made, but it's new age and totally lame. And don't even think about improvising with the addition of zucchini, corn (unless it's hominy), bell peppers, carrots, or even tomatoes. Veggies have their place, and it's outside of this stew (onion is the exception).
2) What kind of meat? Red chile is complemented by robust meaty flavors best, so poultry and even pork aren't under consideration. Lamb would be great, as would mutton or venison, but a beef chuck roast is what I can find at the supermarket, and this works great for chile.
3) Ground meat or chunks? If you're making a Texas-style chili (with a final "i"), you'd be starting out with powdered dry chiles, canned tomatoes, and stock, and you'd probably want to use ground beef. In making the chile base from whole dried chiles, the liquid is water (I suppose you could use stock, but I don't see it adding significantly to the flavor), and tomatoes would be kind of an unwelcome guest. This is a different kind of chile (with a final "e"), and meat chunks work best.
4) Beans or no beans? Completely subjective. Classically, the red chile would be beanless and served with a large quantity of beans on the side. That's fine. Feel free to do just that. But I'm putting my beans in my chile. Just because.
Okay, that's settled. Now it's time to roll up the sleeves and get to work. Yes—lunch is tomorrow, but chile is better if it has a chance to flavor-meld. Some dishes need individual ingredients to assert their identities, but not chile. The first phase of work is relaxed, and it concludes with a trip to the gym.
I start by pulling off the stems from the chiles and opening them to give a quick inspection—any moldies should be tossed. Soaking in lots of cold water for about an hour reconstitutes the chiles and softens any dirt clods, which then dislodge and settle out to the bottom. After the chiles are softened they should be opened and relieved of their cores and seeds, which would only add bitterness. The chiles can then go into a pan with almost enough water to cover, and cooked (covered) for a half hour or so with some additional spices—I use whole cumin seed and whole dried oregano. Then I turn off the fire and go for a spin and then to the supermarket to buy the meat and the beans.
Back now, and the work is somewhat more intense because two things are done at the same time. First thing to do (and this doesn't count in the two things) is to pick over the beans (I'm going with small red beans) and get them soaking in cold water.
There's a lot more in a chuck roast than what should be in the chile, but it would be a shame to lose the flavors from the other parts. I maximize and capture those flavors by trimming the fat and rendering it down in a Dutch oven. Then I sauté all the bones and gristle and then remove the bones and crispy bits and pieces but leaving the rendered fat in the pan. Now I can brown up the edible parts of the chuck roast (after a liberal sprinkling with salt) in the fat like (gigantic) steaks. The fire needs to be high enough to keep the moisture seeping out of the meat from building in the pan (then you'll be boiling your food instead of browning it) but not so high to scorch the fond (glaze), which I want to extract for its intensely meaty flavor.
While the rendering/sautéing/browning is going on, the whole stewed chiles need to be converted into a chile base. This involves two kitchen gadgets—perhaps the kind of thing eschewed by Karen, but I'm going to call for them anyways. The general idea here is to spin the chiles with their cooking liquid in a food processor (or a blender) until smooth except for the bits of skin. I'm using the same Regal La Machine that Adri and I have had since our grad school days (and cooking with Karen in our tiny Chicago apartment!), and it takes three batches to process it all. The next part is to remove the chile skin by running it through a food mill. I put the food mill over the deep pot that I'll be using to finish the chile, because from here on it will be just adding stuff to this chile base.
As the meat pieces become fully brown, I pull them from the Dutch oven, cut them into bite-sized chunks, and dump them into the chile pot. Then I pour off all the fat from the Dutch oven and deglaze with just enough water, and after a bit of boiling extraction time, I strain that into the chile pot.
Now that things have calmed down a bit, I put the bones in a pot with plenty of water and bring that to a boil and add the soaked beans. No, they don't have to be fully inflated—they can finish hydrating in the cooking pot. These will have to cook until they are just tender (pull a bean out to taste occasionally), and they (beans, not bones) will go into the chile pot.
Here's something you weren't expecting. I clean two heads of garlic and chop them into a fine mince (that's a lot of garlic), then sauté this in olive oil until just cooked, and this goes into the pot. Then one chopped red onion. And salt—maybe not quite all the way to taste but almost. A nice splash of sherry vinegar adds brightness here and accentuates the salt.
The pot now has chile base, meat (and meat deglazement), beans, garlic, onion, vinegar, and salt. Simple, and yet not a simple dish at all. Nothing else is to be added, although the meat still needs to cook to tenderness. Since lunch is tomorrow, I bring the pot up to a simmer, cover, and turn off the heat. It can stay on the stove overnight.
About an hour before lunch, I bring the pot up to a simmer and leave it there for about 45 minutes and then turn off the fire. It will stay hot throughout lunch. I hope there are leftovers.
The drive home was time to contemplate what to do with them. My first idea was to work out a new form for "messicani," a thin slice of fatty pork shoulder sprinkled with mixture of grated parmiggiano, peperoncino, and salt and rolled tightly around a wooden skewer and cooked over an open grill. Although it's name means "Mexican," this is a specialty from the Adriatic coast of Puglia in Italy, and it's actually pretty unlikely that there is any real Mexican connection at all for this tasty version of meat on a stick. My thoughts were to re-invent messicani with some authentic Mexican flavors…
…but then I got home, and Adri says, "Oh, you're making chile. That's great! We'll have it tomorrow for lunch."
Okay, I'm making chile, which to us means a stew based on chile and meat. Sounds straightforward enough—but there are decisions to make:
1) Meat or no meat? Don't even think about vegetarian when it comes to chile. Yes, veggie chile can be made, but it's new age and totally lame. And don't even think about improvising with the addition of zucchini, corn (unless it's hominy), bell peppers, carrots, or even tomatoes. Veggies have their place, and it's outside of this stew (onion is the exception).
2) What kind of meat? Red chile is complemented by robust meaty flavors best, so poultry and even pork aren't under consideration. Lamb would be great, as would mutton or venison, but a beef chuck roast is what I can find at the supermarket, and this works great for chile.
3) Ground meat or chunks? If you're making a Texas-style chili (with a final "i"), you'd be starting out with powdered dry chiles, canned tomatoes, and stock, and you'd probably want to use ground beef. In making the chile base from whole dried chiles, the liquid is water (I suppose you could use stock, but I don't see it adding significantly to the flavor), and tomatoes would be kind of an unwelcome guest. This is a different kind of chile (with a final "e"), and meat chunks work best.
4) Beans or no beans? Completely subjective. Classically, the red chile would be beanless and served with a large quantity of beans on the side. That's fine. Feel free to do just that. But I'm putting my beans in my chile. Just because.
Okay, that's settled. Now it's time to roll up the sleeves and get to work. Yes—lunch is tomorrow, but chile is better if it has a chance to flavor-meld. Some dishes need individual ingredients to assert their identities, but not chile. The first phase of work is relaxed, and it concludes with a trip to the gym.
I start by pulling off the stems from the chiles and opening them to give a quick inspection—any moldies should be tossed. Soaking in lots of cold water for about an hour reconstitutes the chiles and softens any dirt clods, which then dislodge and settle out to the bottom. After the chiles are softened they should be opened and relieved of their cores and seeds, which would only add bitterness. The chiles can then go into a pan with almost enough water to cover, and cooked (covered) for a half hour or so with some additional spices—I use whole cumin seed and whole dried oregano. Then I turn off the fire and go for a spin and then to the supermarket to buy the meat and the beans.
Back now, and the work is somewhat more intense because two things are done at the same time. First thing to do (and this doesn't count in the two things) is to pick over the beans (I'm going with small red beans) and get them soaking in cold water.
There's a lot more in a chuck roast than what should be in the chile, but it would be a shame to lose the flavors from the other parts. I maximize and capture those flavors by trimming the fat and rendering it down in a Dutch oven. Then I sauté all the bones and gristle and then remove the bones and crispy bits and pieces but leaving the rendered fat in the pan. Now I can brown up the edible parts of the chuck roast (after a liberal sprinkling with salt) in the fat like (gigantic) steaks. The fire needs to be high enough to keep the moisture seeping out of the meat from building in the pan (then you'll be boiling your food instead of browning it) but not so high to scorch the fond (glaze), which I want to extract for its intensely meaty flavor.
While the rendering/sautéing/browning is going on, the whole stewed chiles need to be converted into a chile base. This involves two kitchen gadgets—perhaps the kind of thing eschewed by Karen, but I'm going to call for them anyways. The general idea here is to spin the chiles with their cooking liquid in a food processor (or a blender) until smooth except for the bits of skin. I'm using the same Regal La Machine that Adri and I have had since our grad school days (and cooking with Karen in our tiny Chicago apartment!), and it takes three batches to process it all. The next part is to remove the chile skin by running it through a food mill. I put the food mill over the deep pot that I'll be using to finish the chile, because from here on it will be just adding stuff to this chile base.
As the meat pieces become fully brown, I pull them from the Dutch oven, cut them into bite-sized chunks, and dump them into the chile pot. Then I pour off all the fat from the Dutch oven and deglaze with just enough water, and after a bit of boiling extraction time, I strain that into the chile pot.
Now that things have calmed down a bit, I put the bones in a pot with plenty of water and bring that to a boil and add the soaked beans. No, they don't have to be fully inflated—they can finish hydrating in the cooking pot. These will have to cook until they are just tender (pull a bean out to taste occasionally), and they (beans, not bones) will go into the chile pot.
Here's something you weren't expecting. I clean two heads of garlic and chop them into a fine mince (that's a lot of garlic), then sauté this in olive oil until just cooked, and this goes into the pot. Then one chopped red onion. And salt—maybe not quite all the way to taste but almost. A nice splash of sherry vinegar adds brightness here and accentuates the salt.
The pot now has chile base, meat (and meat deglazement), beans, garlic, onion, vinegar, and salt. Simple, and yet not a simple dish at all. Nothing else is to be added, although the meat still needs to cook to tenderness. Since lunch is tomorrow, I bring the pot up to a simmer, cover, and turn off the heat. It can stay on the stove overnight.
About an hour before lunch, I bring the pot up to a simmer and leave it there for about 45 minutes and then turn off the fire. It will stay hot throughout lunch. I hope there are leftovers.
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