Tag: France

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

195. Pan-Seared Filet Mignon with Merlot Sauce p.428

Here’s the recipe for the Merlot sauce part of this dish,

This is the second time I’ve made this dish. The first was almost two years ago, when I made it for my dining companion’s birthday dinner. Part of her birthday present was that the steak would be just for her, not for The Project too. That meant I could just cook and serve without the awkward photo session in the kitchen that dishes for The Project require, and I didn’t have to be taking mental notes for a future blog post (but of course I couldn’t help myself). That first time this steak was absolutely fantastic, and I was looking forward to making it again to count it towards The Project.

In this dish filet-mignon is browned in a skillet, then finished in the oven, and served topped with a red wine sauce. The Merlot sauce starts by making a caramel, then dissolving vinegar in the boiling sugar. In another pan onions are softened in butter, and wine, veal stock or demi glace, are added and simmered. The mixture is seasoned, and the solids are strained out. The liquid is added to the caramel, and heated until it’s dissolved. The steaks are served drizzled with the sauce.

The Good: It’s filet mignon with a buttery wine and veal demi-glace sauce, it’s fantastic, if you have any love in your heart for red meat, you will like this dish. The caramel is the surprising part of the sauce, adding sweetness, but also a depth which compliments the browned meat. Filet mignon is all about the so-tender-it-shouldn’t-be-possible texture, and a rich sauce really enhances that. Since it’s a lean cut of meat, the buttery sauce doesn’t put it over the top. Demi-glace is a wonderful wonderful thing, everything it touches just gets better, enhancing flavours, smoothing textures, and bringing the whole sauce together.

The Bad: While the dish was delicious, the technique could have been improved. The steaks are seared in the pan, then roasted to finish cooking through. This builds up a good deal of delicious, wonderful, splendid, magical fond on the bottom of the pan. These browned bits are usually deglazed and used as part of a pan sauce, but this recipe commits the nearly unforgivable sin of just throwing all that goodness out. It also doesn’t ask for any juices that run from the steaks as they rest to be poured into the sauce. That’s just silly. By skipping these steps the sauce can be completely made in advance, which is convenient, but you end up throwing away what could have been the most flavorful part of the dish.

I made a mistake with these steaks and trusted my meat thermometer over my eyes and finger test. I was paranoid about over cooking the steaks (filet mignon overcooks quickly), so I took them out sooner than I should and counted on carryover to finish the job. I radically miscalculated and ended up serving them quite rare. I take my steak rare, and it was a little underdone for me, my dining companion prefers the medium side of medium rare, and it was just not going to happen for her. We were already sitting, and she didn’t want to wait to put it back in the oven, so she nuked it instead. A little part of me dies every time that happens, but it’s a good incentive to get the steaks right the first time.

The Verdict: These were delicious steaks, no question, I’d recommend them to anyone. I think there are a few tweaks that should be made, and it’s certainly not an inexpensive way to do dinner, but if you’re looking for an impressive but not overwhelming dish for a special occasion this is a pretty darn good way to go. The final taste is certainly 5 mushroom worthy, but the travesty of the wasted fond means that I can’t give it full marks.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

194. Pommes Anna p.571


The recipe
This is a ridiculously simple dish, but I still managed to mess it up. It should have been the centerpiece of our meal, but thanks to me it was just an exercise in missed potential. There are only two real ingredients, potatoes and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper. You slice the potatoes on a mandolin as thinly as possible, soak the slices in cold water, then pat them dry. The slices are layered in a buttered ovenproof skillet, and the layers are drizzed with  melted butter, and seasoned. Once all the layers are down the potatoes are covered with a buttered foil disk for the first half of baking, and are uncovered for the final half. When they they’re a gorgeous golden brown you take them out, invert the cake onto a serving dish and cut it into wedges.

The Good: I’ve had pommes anna before, and I can assure that they are very very good, anything wth 1 1/2 sticks of butter to 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes will necessarily be decadent. This is one of those dishes that you can’t help but doing a Julia Child impression while assembling. If it’s done right the potatoes are creamy with just the slightest bit of resistance left to them, it’s almost a confit de pommes de terre. All of the exterior surfaces are browned and crisp like the best potato chip you’ve ever had. It’s a truly decadent dish, and you can’t help but smile when you eat it.

The Bad: My pommes anna were nothing like the ideal I just set out. I followed all the steps correctly, right up until the bit where you take them out of the oven once the’re golden and crisp. I forgot about them for another twenty minutes to half an hour, and they had basically devolved into overcooked potato chips. There was enough butter there to keep it from actually burning, it just tasted very very deeply browned. You might say that potato chips made with butter have something going for them, and honestly it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t at all what the recipe was going for.

A huge part of this was my fault, but I was a little surprised at how thinly layered the potatoes were in the first place. The linked recipe calls for a nine inch pan, but The Book’s version spreads the same amount of potato out in a 10 inch pan. Such a thin layer of potatoes is more susceptible to burning, and even at its intended non-dehydrated thickness there wouldn’t have been enough delicious creamy centre to really satisfy me. Yes, the crunchy exterior is everyone’s favorite part, but it’s only special when it’s in ballance with a fair bit of middle. In future I’d consider going even smaller, think 8 inches, to get a satisfyingly thick stack of potatoes.

The Verdict: It’s hard to rate recipes when they’re my failures and not the book’s. The dish I produced wouldn’t early more than a 2, but I think the recipe as written has the potential for greatness. I’m a vindictive guy, so I’m only going to give them a 3.5, but done right they might be a five.

Categories
Soups The Book

178. French Pea Soup – Potage-Saint-Germain p.96


The recipe

I was really excited to try this soup. I went looking for a pea soup recipe in The Book, expecting to find a hearty split pea version with ham hocks, instead I got this spring vegetable centric Potage-Saint-Germain. It wasn’t really what I was looking for that night, and the idea of mint in my soup seemed a bit weird, but one ingredient captured my imagination and I knew I had to do this recipe ASAP. That ingredient was lettuce. I’ve been toying with the idea of cooked lettuce since I saw an early Julia Child episode where she braises whole Romaine heads and serves the flaccid results. It looked terrible but she assured me that it was an excellent treatment for lettuce. As we all know, Julia’s word is law, or at least worthy of a test. I’ve never cooked lettuce in any way before, I guess it’s not that different from cooking bitter greens, bok choy or cabbage, but it seems delightfully sacrilegious and just plain wrong.

To prepare this soup you start by making croûtons with an old baguette, butter and salt in the oven. The soup starts with softening leaks in butter, then adding chicken stock and water. Once it’s boiling you add chopped Bibb lettuce, and frozen peas. As soon as the peas are tender you stir in fresh mint, and purée the soup in the blender (seriously be careful, hot pea soup was used as a viable substitute for napalm in the Nam). The soup is then seasoned with salt and pepper, and served hot topped with croûtons and lightly beaten cream.

The idea with the beaten cream was to make elegant drops, and to run a knife through them to make a stunning pattern. You can see how well that worked out for me. I think my central problem with this soup was that it was served hot. The hot soup melted the slightly whipped cream and sent it running all over the place, and it just tasted weird. Minted things are rarely served piping hot, it’s an odd juxtaposition, mint is the universal symbol of cool and refreshing, but this was a thick, hearty, hot, soup. I tried some the next day at room temperature and I was much happier. The lettuce experiment was a success though, the lettuce along with peas, leaks, and mint were the prominent flavours in the soup, and the lettuce really worked. The Book describes the flavour of the lettuce in this soup as “grassy” and I’m glad they got in a food writing buzz word there, but really it tastes exactly like uncooked lettuce, and in this case that’s a good thing. Again, hot lettuce isn’t really for me, I much preferred that flavour when the soup was cool. I like croûtons in any context, and this was no exception. The soup was thick enough that they floated easily, and didn’t get soggy.

I won’t be rushing to make this soup again, and if I did I certainly wouldn’t serve it warm. The flavours and ideas were pretty good, but the temperature was a big miss, and I wasn’t fond of the drizzled cream on top. I think the ideas behind this soup are solid, and I’m looking forward to playing with different combinations of these ingredients. Pottage-Saint-Germain is a beloved French classic, but I’m not sure it’s for me.

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

165. Chocolate Macaroons p.676

I can’t find the recipe for these online, but they’re so good I’ll retype it for you lovely people.

FOR MACAROONS

1 1/3 cups (7 ounces) skinned whole almonds

3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

7/8 cup egg whites (from 6 large eggs)

pinch of salt

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

FOR GANACHE FILLING

1/2 cup heavy cream

2 teaspoons whole milk

2 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

4 ounces good bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT: Parchment paper; a pastry bag fitted with a 1/4-inch plain tip

MAKE THE MACAROONS: Put a rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 400F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Pulse almonds with 2 cups confectioners’ sugar in a food processor until finely ground (almost to a powder). Add cocoa and remaining 1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar and pulse until combined.

Beat egg whites with salt in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until they hold soft peaks. Add granulated sugar and beat until whites just hold stiff peaks. Gently but thoroughly fold in almond mixture in 3 batches (batter will be very soft).

Transfer batter to a pastry bag and pipe 1-inch-wide mounds about 2 inches apart on lined baking sheets. Bake macaroons in batches until tops are slightly cracked and appear dry but are still slightly soft to the touch, 8 to 10 minutes per batch. Transfer macaroons, still on parchment, to dampened kitchen towels and cool for 5 minutes, then peel from paper and cool completely on racks.

MEANWHILE, MAKE THE GANACHE FILLING: Bring cream and milk to a boil in a small heavy saucepan over moderate heat. Whisk in cocoa and remove from heat. Add chopped chocolate and butter and stir until smooth. Cool filling, then refrigerate, covered, until firm enough to hold its shape when spread, about 30 minutes.

Sandwich flat sides of macaroons together with 1/2 teaspoon filling per pair.

COOK’S NOTES

  • While 7/8 cup egg whites may seem and odd measure, this amount gives the ideal texture and flavour. Measure the whites in a liquid-measuring cup.
  • The macaroons can be made up to 1 day before you fill them. Refrigerate, layered between sheets of wax or parchment paper, in an airtight container.
  • The filled macaroons keep, layered between sheets of way or parchment paper in an airtight container and refrigerated, for up to 1 week.

I don’t have enough good things to say about this recipe. The cookies were delicious and elegant. The recipe makes a lot of cookies, so I brought them to several gatherings, always to rave reviews. The chocolate filling is wonderful, and everyone loves ganache, but the cookie itself was my favourite part. I really like flourless cookies like this, the almonds provide substance, but the structure is all from the meringue. The outer surface of the cookie was smooth and crisp, the interior was like almond sponge candy, soft, but with just a little bit of toothsomeness. Despite all the sugar, they miraculously avoided being too sweet.

My only bone to pick with this recipe, is the use of the word macaroon in the title. A double O macaroon is an American coconut cookie, a single O macaron is a French almond cookie, get it straight Gourmet. These were truly excellent cookies, they were a bit time consuming and finicky, but I enjoyed the process. The recipe was well written and didn’t lead to any major surprises. My only caveat is to make sure to grind the almonds very finely, otherwise they’ll clog up the tip of the pastry bag when you’re piping the cookies.

A while ago my brother brought me some Macarons from a very posh bakery in Paris, and while theirs were certainly prettier, I preferred the flavour of my homemade version. These macarons are my new favourite cookie, and I expect them to be on frequent rotation in our house.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

164. Beef Bourguignon p.440

The recipe

I grew up on boeuf bourguignon, we could be guaranteed to have it at least once a month during the winter. Since a braised dish like this is better a day or two after it’s cooked, my mom would usually make it on a Sunday, and it would sit on the chilly garage floor in her big orange Le Creuset Dutch oven until dinnertime on Tuesday. I remember being very small, and being tasked with bringing the stew upstairs, I swear that cast iron pot weighed more than I did, and it was so cold it burned. Since a bottle of wine goes into a boeuf bourguignon, and even after a long braise not all of the alcohol cooks off, I’m wondering if this dish didn’t contribute to some of excellent sleeping we got done as kids.

The recipe starts with some home butchery, getting beef shoulder off the bone, and cubed. The cubes are then seasoned, coated in flour, and thoroughly browned. The meat then braises for an afternoon with sweated onions, garlic, and carrots, tomatoes, red wine, and a bouquet garni. While that’s going on you get to blanch and peel boiling onions. I hate peeling boiling onions, but I did it anyway. The onions then get browned with some butter, and simmered until tender. You then sauté some mushrooms in butter, and add the mushrooms and onions to the braise, and let it simmer for a few minutes. Once everything’s done cooking you can eat it right away, or better yet stick in in the back of the fridge and forget about it for a couple of days. The Book recommends serving this dish with buttered potatoes, but I’ve always been a fan of egg noodles with boeuf bourguignon, so that’s what we had.

There’s an error in this recipe. The first ingredient listed is a quarter pound of bacon, and the fist cooking direction is to simmer the bacon in water for a few minutes. That bacon is never mentioned again. The linked Epicurious recipe has the error fixed, you’re supposed to crisp up the bacon in the pot before starting the braise, but it’s mystery bacon if you follow The Books version. I guessed that it was meant to go into the braise, and that worked out well, but I hope they’ve caught this mistake in the updated version of The Book.

I was entirely satisfied with this dish, it tastes just like what mom used to make, it’s hearty, rich, stick to your ribs, winter cooking. The flavours were right on, this is not a difficult dish to get close to right, but making it really well is a challenge. This is a really solid boeuf bourguignon recipe, my only complaint is that it was a bit too salty. I’ll certainly be making this one again next winter.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

137. Ratatouille p.586


The recipe

Everyone, or at least everyone who cares about food, has a stockpile of formative food memories, often centred on parents and grandparents doing things the way they’d always been done, or traveling experiences where the zeitgeist of your food universe is overturned by a brand new culture. The list of culinary luminaries who trace their food awakenings back to a summer trip to France is longer than I’d care to count. So it should come as no surprise that my thirteen year old self came home from a month long stay with a family near Lyons with a different perspective on food, and in particular ratatouille.

I don’t think I took nearly as much advantage of my time there as I should have, I mostly sulked, pittied myself, and felt homesick. I was an awful house guest, and I was convinced I was being punished. But, my hosts graciously put up with this insufferable Canadian brat, and exposed me to some wonderful things that I wasn’t ready to appreciate. Fifteen years later I can still taste most of the meals we ate, and the idea of staying in a four hundred year old farm house, surrounded by rolling pastures, creaky old barns, and tiny streams sounds wonderful. I wish I could go back and gather snails off the rocks in the field after a rain for escargot in garlic butter, and the weekly farmers market wouldn’t seem like the painful drudgery it did at the time. I owe that family a huge debt of gratitude, and an apology.

I did appreciate most of the food experiences at the time, the rich creamy yogurt was unlike anything I’d ever eaten, the impeccably cured sausages were a revelation, and of course the cheese. I also started to come around on very rare steak. The biggest change was the idea that vegetables could good enough to crave, and not just an afterthought to be gotten out of if at all possible. Ratatouille was the catalyst for that change. A nice older couple who had helped to organize my trip invited us over for lunch in the back garden, where we ate ratatouille, baguette, and nibbled on olives. At first I was puzzled by the lack of a meaty main course, but soon I couldn’t have cared less. The ratatouille was unbelievably good, and I just couldn’t understand why. My mother had made it before, and I was way to smart to fall for her hiding veggies in a stew trickery, so I turned my nose up at it. But this ratatouille was a completely different being, it was insanely flavourful, and multi layered with each element distinct, but contributing to the whole. There were tomatoes, garlic, peppers, onions, zucchini, eggplant, that were more fresh and explosively flavourful than I could ever have conceived of them being. That meal filled me with a sense of profound contentment, connectedness, and peace. Thinking back that euphoria probably had a lot more to do with the Champagne and Beaujolais they let me drink, but one way or another my perspective on ratatouille had been changed. I asked the old man what the secret was, and he told me about herbs de provence, so I brought a big bag home to try to get my mother to recreate it. Of course, my mother had herbs de provence, the secret was really in the incredible produce that went into the stew, and a lifetime spent honing the technique ’till his ratatouille was as good as it could be.

The Book’s ratatouille doesn’t live up to the old man’s, but it at least recalls it. The Book uses a very odd method, the recipe starts by making the tomato sauce with peeled (I didn’t bother) seeded and chopped tomatoes, sliced garlic, parsley, and basil leaves. While the sauce simmers, onions, bell peppers, zucchini, and eggplant are individually browned, then added to the tomato sauce and allowed to simmer for an hour. This batch browning of the veggies does a nice job building flavour, but it’s a huge pain, and it takes a whole whack of oil. I liked the added complexity, but there really was much more oil than necessary. I think you could get a similar effect by tossing the veggies with a more reasonable amount of oil and spreading them on cookie sheets and running them under the broiler for a few minutes. I was also surprised by the lack of herbs de provence, usually that herb blend is de rigueur for ratatouille. The basil only strategy turned out to be quite delicious, but I did miss the other flavours. My favorite ratatouilles have quite distinct chunks of vegetables, which retain some of their original texture, while softening into a cohesive blend with the others. Here, everything got a bit too soft, and I wonder if it wouldn’t have worked better to simmer it for less time, but let it sit in the fridge for a day or two before serving it.

I made this ratatouille twice within a few weeks. I was very well pleased with my first attempt, and decided to bring a second batch to a large family affair. The second attempt just didn’t live up to the first one, and I can’t explain why. The first batch went over pretty well with my dining companion, and some friends I served it to, but the second was largely ignored at dinner. That inconsistency is kind of worrying to me, I have no clue what factors I varied in my second attempt, but it just didn’t have that special something. My first try was very good, and could have been excellent with a few tweaks, however the inexplicably mediocre second attempt will keep me from giving this a great rating.

Categories
Poultry The Book

121. Duck Breasts with Orange Ancho Chile Sauce p.396


The recipe

This recipe was a show stopper. It’s the only recipe for duck breast in the book, and that’s a real shame. Magret de canard is one of the staples of the Québécois culinary scene, a distinctive take on the seared duck breast is de rigueur for any restaurant interested in cuisine de terroir. Fusion may have been the dining buzz-word of the 90’s, but it’s certainly alive and well. It would seem that every third restaurant to open in the city has a _________ inspired menu playing on Québécois classics, most likely in tiny, tapas style portions. This Mexican influenced magret would fit in beautifully.

The duck breast is seasoned with salt and pepper, and simply seared. The skin renders enough fat that oil isn’t necessary. The sauce is made with a purée of Ancho chiles, and garlic which is added to a caramel of orange and lime juices, then finished with butter. The sauce had a lovely balance of sweet, acid, and heat, which complimented the powerful flavour of the duck. Duck does wonderfully with a slightly sweet sauce, and the orange caramel fit the bill, the rounded smoky Ancho flavour tempered the sweetness and played up the depth and body of the duck.

Lots of people think they don’t like duck, and avoid it, or have only ever encountered it in Chinese preparations. A simply seared duck breast might be a revelation for them. My dining companion’s mother told us over dinner about her childhood experiences of eating duck. Apparently her family got it’s duck from local hunters, and they risked a mouthfull of buckshot with every bite. She recalls that it was too gamy and intense to be enjoyable, so she avoided it for the next twenty years, but these days she’s a fan. The duck we get today is raised on farms much like chickens, and the flavour appears to have mellowed. People deplore the fact that pork doesn’t taste like pork anymore, but no one complains that duck has lost its muskiness. I’ve never had duck from a hunter, but I’d like to compare some time.

Looking at that beautifully pink duck breast is making my mouth water. It occurs to me though, that duck is the only poultry you’d ever consider cooking to less than well done. A medium-rare chicken breast brings on gasps of revusion, not delight. Duck really does taste best when pink though.

If you’ve never tried a magret de canard I absolutely encourage you to, and the sauce The Book has paired with this one is a wonderful compliment. I loved that the sauce showed off everything I enjoy about duck breast, without trying to show it up. Duck Breasts with Orange Ancho Chile Sauce you’ve earned your five mushroom rating.

Categories
Fish and Shellfish The Book

120. Scallops Provençale p.319


The recipe from Epicurious is similar to The Book’s version, but only makes half as much.

I made these for my dining companion’s parents, who came for a surprise visit. The last time I cooked for them the pyrex pan I had my gravy in exploded, so I was a bit nervous about this dinner. We decided on a scallop and shrimp first-course, and duck for the main-course.

I had a great time shopping for ingredients with them. My dining companion’s father really enjoyed going to the cheesemonger’s, the butcher’s, the baker’s, the fruit and vegetable stand, and the fishmonger’s shops instead of a one stop mega-mart. It’s one of the things I love about my neighborhood, but sometimes I take it for granted.

The scallops were a very nice way to start our meal, and it was an easy dish to put together. The scallops are simply seasoned with salt and pepper and then seared. Once the scallops are done a two-minute tomato sauce is brought together in the pan with garlic, thyme, and basil. The tiny shrimp in the photo were seared, the pan was deglazed with pernod, and finished with tarragon.

The scallops were magnificent. I got lucky and cooked them just right, with a tastily browned crust on the outside, and a just barely cooked centre. I’ve had difficultly with scallops before, particularly little ones, but these jumbo scallops were wonderfully easy to work with, and had and amazingly fresh and mild maritime flavour. I really dislike the metallic flavour scallops can sometimes have, but there wasn’t a trace of that in this preparation. I was careful to rinse them thoroughly before cooking, which may have helped.

The sauce was nice, but nothing particularly special. My main complaint was that it was too oily. The scallops had a fairly subtle taste, and the tomato and garlic tended to overwhelm it a bit. I very much like shellfish tossed in a tomato based pasta sauce, where the flavours mix and mingle, but in this case I was really enjoying the clean flavour of the scallop all on its own. The thyme and particularly the basil enhanced the scallop’s flavour without covering it up though. I ate most of the sauce with the little anise flavoured shrimp, which was wonderful combination. I think I might add a bit of pernod to my next pasta dish.

I thought this worked really well as a first course, it was a very pretty dish, and it really wasn’t very much trouble to put together. Those gigantic scallops aren’t inexpensive, but since you can get away with one per person as a first course, or two to three each as a main, they’re not out of reach. I’d certainly make this again, but I might tone down the sauce a bit.

Categories
Salads The Book

118. Frisée Salad with Lardons and Poached Eggs p.139


The recipe on Epicurious helpfully notes that frisée is curly French endive, The Book does not. I really don’t know much about salad greens and this one stumped me. I thought it was the curly lettuce I picked up, but I was wrong. My dining companion is a salad impresario, she has an eye for composition, and a knack for combining the elements, and pairing them with the perfect dressing. I usually stick to the lettuce or other greens with balsamic and olive oil formula. It’s not exciting, but it gets the job done.

In this salad slab bacon is cut into lardons, which are cooked up in a pan then put to the side. Shallots are then softened in the bacon drippings, and red wine vinegar is added to the pan (I’ll remember to use a splatter screen the next time I follow that step), this hot dressing is then poured over the frisée to slightly wilt it. The salad is then topped with the lardons and a poached egg.

The recipe must have an error in it because it never actually mentions that you’re supposed to top the final salad with lardons, but given that the lardons are in the title it would be pretty silly not to include them. Besides, lardons are one of the greatest culinary achievements of mankind. If I could only have one form of cured pork for the rest of my life, I’d choose bacon strips, but lardons are magnificent. They have the advantage of being French and fancy sounding, which makes it easier not to think about the cardiovascular consequences of eating them. The thicker cut also preserves their meaty porcine nature, which bacon can sometimes lose in favour of crispness.

I’ve been working on my egg poaching technique, and things are coming along to the point that I’m almost satisfied. I didn’t add enough water to the pan for these eggs, so they stayed yellow on top, but I find that kind of attractive. I’d love to be able to produce the perfectly spherical poached eggs you get in restaurants, but for now I’m happy with the fact that the whites set, the yolks run, and the come out of the pan in one piece.

This salad was exceedingly good. I broke my egg and let the yolk run all over the greens. where it combined with the already rich bacon dripping based dressing. This is the kind of decadence I can’t help but smile and make incoherent consonant sounds in response to. The vinegar and shallots were nice contrasting flavours. Eggs and bacon for breakfast have to to pair well with coffee and orange juice, so red wine vinegar doesn’t play a big role on brunch menus, but it worked quite well here.

My uninformed choice of salad greens took away from the recipe a bit. Actual frisée is much crunchier than the soft lettuce I chose. The hot dressing wilted my salad in a less than appealing way, but with a sturdier green it would have worked very nicely indeed. Frisée is also more bitter and flavourful than curly lettuce, and might have stood up to the robust dressing a bit better. Oh well, it was delicious. I’ll get it right next time.

Some of my favourite childhood memories are of my Mom coming home late, and deciding that we should have breakfast for dinner. She’d fry up some eggs and bacon and have three kids fed in under twenty minutes. It was always such a treat, and this recipe captured that special out-of-the-blue feeling.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

104. Beef Tenderloin with Cornichon Tarragon Sauce p.416


The recipe

Some good friends were coming to dinner, and I wanted to make something a bit special. When I’m looking for dishes suitable for an occasion, beef tenderloin is frequently at the top of that list. I had frozen part of the tenderloin I used for the Twenty-First-Century Beef Wellington so it was an easy choice to make. I decided to serve the roast tenderloin with three sauces, the cornichon tarragon sauce from this recipe, a Stilton sauce, and whipped horseradish cream. This sort of a menu seems much more appropriate to the fall weather I’m writing this in, than the summer weather I cooked it in. However, it was a pleasantly warm day, and I made one important change to the recipe. I grilled my tenderloin outside instead of sticking it in a 350 degree oven. The sauces were a bit rich for summer, but that just encouraged restraint.

The sauce is made by reducing white wine, shallots and tarragon, then adding cream, thinly sliced cornichons, and a mixture of mustard whipped with butter. This was a seriously powerful sauce. The mustard, tarragon, and shallot flavours were fairly strong on their own, but the cornichons were overpowering. I picked up good quality, imported sour gherkins from France. They were mouth puckeringly sour, without too much other flavour. They were nicely crunchy, but not really my favourite pickle style. The recipe calls for a lot of these little guys, and their concentrated vinegar permeated the whole sauce. My first impression of the sauce wasn’t great, just too sour, and overpowering the somewhat subtle flavours of the tenderloin. As I ate more it grew on me though. Once I stopped making a sourpuss face the underlying flavours came out, and they were good. The sauce also mellowed over the next day, and ended up being in a better balance.

I’m not sure if this is how the recipe was intended to turn out, or I just got a batch of very sour pickles. I think it’s possible I did everything right, because my dining companion preferred this sauce to the other two choices. She agreed that it was sour, but she enjoyed the interplay of the rich creaminess, with the clear vinegar cutting across it. I won’t rush to repeat this one, and if I did I’d try a different brand of pickle, or cut back on them. This sauce had to struggle to get over a bad first impression, but it did redeem itself after a few bites.