The Fumbling Foodie

Quick and Easy

As the frenzy is winding down (the For Sale sign goes up on the house tomorrow), I found a little time to try something I saw a few days ago. While in the Williams-Sonoma store (I didn't buy anything, Heather, I promise!) One of the employees was preparing meatballs in Bordelaise sauce. The meatballs were simply the frozen pre-made veriety found in the supermarket frozen food section.

While in the grocery store a few days ago, I noticed that one brand of meatballs was on a 'Buy One, Get One Free' promotion. Remembering that I had a bottle of Williams-Sonoma Bordelaise Sauce on the shelf, I decided that this would be a good time to try it.

I started the pasta boiling, put the thawed meatballs in my saute pan with a little oil, drizzled on the bordelaise, covered, and let it simmer for a few minutes. When the meatballs were warm, I removed them from the pan, added a little additional Bordelaise and some white wine and deglazed the pan.

To serve I simply poured the pan sauce over the pasta and meatballs. It turned out pretty good.

French Cooking Class Part IV

This is the final installment in a series of posts describing the French Cuisine cooking class I recently attended at Plate It Up! a gourmet kitchen tools store here in Glendale AZ and taught by Chef Patrick Karvis.

You can read Part 1 here.
You can read Part 2 here.
You can read Part 3 here.

For the final course, Chef Patrick showed us how to prepare Steak Au Poivre. The steak is prepared using a sear-roasting technique and then using the fond to create a pan sauce.

I again failed to take photos, so I recreated the dish with a few variations tonight at home. While we used New York Strip in the class, I chose to use a small whole beef tenderloin cut into sections. For demi glace, I buy Demi Glace Gold at my local gourmet supermarket.

Steak Au Poivre

4 steaks, New Your Strip of Beef Ternderloing cut into pieces or similar
1/2 cup demi glace
1/2 cup Jim Beam
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teasp[oon minced shallots
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 375F. Season one side of the steaks with salt and pepper. Go heavy on the pepper. Put 2 tablespoons tea oil or other high smoke-point oil in a saute pan over high heat. Put the steaks into the saute pan peppered side down and season the other side. Let the steaks cook for about 4 minutes. When they release easily from the pan it is time to turn them over. Cook the other side for about four minutes. Put the entire pan into the oven. Using an instant-read thermometer, remove the steaks when they have reached the desired temperature (see this post for temperatures).

Remove the steaks from the pan, put them on a plate and tent with foil. Return the pan to medium-high heat. Add the shallots and garlic. Add the Jim Beam and deglaze the pan. Allow the sauce to reduce for about a minute and then ignite. When the flames have extinguished add the demi glace and heavy cream. Allow the sauce to reduce for another minute. Add the butter, thyme, and parsley. Pour over steaks.

Shown here served with buttered peas and brown-braised onions just like Julia made.

Mushroom-Stuffed Beef Tenderloin with Port Wine Sauce

I love Gwen Ashley Walters' Cool Mountain Cookbook. She has collected recipes from several great ski lodges, and everything in the Cool Mountain Cookbook is not only memorable and great tasting, it is also easy to prepare. I have yet to encounter a dud.

OK, so I was in the supermarket and their high-end beef tenderloins were on sale. And they looked really good. I don't cook much beef because the quality of supermarket beef is so hit-or-miss these days. These tenderloins looked really good though so I took a chance and bought one.

On the way home, I could here Adam chanting, "Grill!, Grill!, Grill!" but I wanted to do something different. Gwen Ashley Walters to the rescue again.

This recipe calls for Demi-Glace. I use More Than Gourmet's Demi-Glace Gold (I should join Amazon's affiliate program and take advantage of linking to them.) Mix it 4-to-1 with hot water, let it simmer a bit, and it is great stuff.

Mushroom-Stuffed Beef Tenderloin with Port Wine Sauce

1 slice smoked bacon, finely chopped
2 portabella mushroom caps, chopped
1/2 cup sliced white button mushrooms
2 teaspoons butter
1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
4 (8-ounce filet mignons)
Kosher Salt
Ground black pepper
Flour for dusting
1 cup ruby port wine
1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot
1 cup demi-glace

1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Add the bacon to a cold 10-inch skillet and heat over medium-high heat. Cook until bacon is brown. Stir in the mushrooms, butter, garlic, and rosemary. Cook until mushrooms are tender, about 5 minutes. Drain off liquid and place mushroom mixture into a food processor. Pulse a few times, finely chopping (but not puréeing) the mixture. Remove and season with salt and pepper.

2. Cut a 1-inch incision in the center (from the side, not the top) of the filet from top to bottom (I made a horizontal cut instead). Work the knife from side to side, trying to split the steak in half without actually doing so (to make a pocket within the steak). You don't want to cut through the sides and you don't want your incision too wide or the stuffing won't stay in.

3. Stuff the pocket with the mushroom mixture until full but not bulging. Lightly dust the filet with flour.

4. Heat a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of oil and when hot, add the filets, searing both sides until brown, about 3 minutes per side. Move the pan to the preheated oven to finish (150-155F on an instant-read thermometer for medium to medium-well). When the filets are done, remove them from the pan, put them on a plate and tent with foil.

5. Put the sauté pan back on the stove over medium-high heat. Add the Port and deglaze the pan. Add the shallots and reduce by half. Stir in the demi-glace and cook until the desired consistency has been reached.

Shown here served with Pommes de terre de Hollande. Thank you Gwen, for permission to republish the recipe.

Estouffade de Joue de Boeuf

One of my favorite cookbooks is the Bistro edition of Sharon O'Connor's Menus And Music series. Many of my best meals have come from recipes in it. It is full of authentic recipes from actual Paris bistros, and usually result in pretty memorable dishes from pretty pedestrian ingredients.

I am coming to realize, however that authentic European chicken and beef are quite different from what we have here in the USA. Our meats are much more tender and do not require the lengthy cooking and marinating times. Recipes designed to make a tough old French farm hen tender would probably cause a Safeway-bought chicken to disintegrate.

The recipe for Estouffade de Joue de Boeuf (Braised Beef Cheeks) takes this difference into account somewhat. It calls for beef cheeks, which are pretty tough, and my local grocer has the good grace not to carry it. Stew meat (chuck, brisket, round, or rump) is a lot more tender than cheeks. The recipe even provides an alternate cooking time when using stew meat.

The basic recipe calls for marinating the stew meat in red wine for 24 hours, browning it, and then cooking in the oven at 30 degrees for 2-3 hours.

WOW was the result tender! The pan drippings are mixed with a lot of butter and a little unsweetened chocolate for a nice rich sauce.

I was a little disappointed in the flavor though. It was a little bland. I think this recipe is a good starting point for my own variation on braised beef or beef stew. I'll just need to start experimenting with the herbs and spices.