daring kitchen, may

This month we were back to French food with something I've wanted to make since seeing Julie & Julia, boeuf bourguignon. Slow cooking at its finest? I was about to find out if that beatific expression the editor has on her face once tasting it was legitimate.

Our May 2012 Daring Cooks’ hostess was Fabi of fabsfood. Fabi challenged us to make Boeuf Bourguignon, a classic French stew originating from the Burgundy region of France.

This recipe is, to my mind, so tied up with Julia Child (mostly thanks to the movie) that I spent a half-hour one morning watching the series premiere episode of Child's "The French Chef" in which she makes the dish. It was a half-hour well spent. She'd never make it as a cooking show host today - which is a shame, really. She was so basic, and kind of quirky but in a good way. Little tips that she tossed in about drying the beef, how to tell when the butter was hot enough so the mushrooms would cook properly, how to make the beurre manié (equal parts butter and flour mashed together then stirred in to thicken and nicely finish the sauce), were all helpful. I enjoyed it enough to watch two more episodes after (potatoes, in which she flips them and half ends up on the stove, and another in which she can't find the flour part way through). Gotta love 1963 television.

But back to the bourguignon.

To start with: beef. Not just any cut, but the cheap ones (yay!). This saving would, however, be countered somewhat by using almost an entire bottle of a nice pinot noir. At its root, though, this is slow cooking and so the connnective tissue that would make the cheap cut comparable to munching on a shoe if I grilled it ends up melting away into tender, flavorful meat. 

The dish actually starts with blanching bacon, which seemed a bit of sacrilege, but I dutifully simmered it in water. The beef, dried with paper towels so it would sear properly, was browned in oil, then removed to wait with the bacon until the carrot and onion had a chance to cook. The meat went back into the pot, had salt, pepper and flour added, then tossed before going into the oven to let things get a bit of a crust on it (a step well worth its time), and then the wine, beef stock, garlic, bay leaf, cloves,and tomato paste were all added. Then - the sweet part of this, besides the eating: into the oven for 4 hours. I love being done the bulk of supper prep around noon.

Meanwhile, closer to time for that lovely-smelling concoction to be done, pearl onions were braised and mushrooms sautéed in butter. Side note: this is not fair. I really, really, truly cannot resist mushrooms sautéed in butter. I wanted to eat them all.

The meat being spoon-cuttably soft, the liquid was strained and reduced before going back into the pot, this time with the mushrooms and onions. And, there it was: my first boeuf bourguignon. 

So, so good. Hearty, complex, but with a kind of simple feeling. Really, it's such basic, ancestral-type food. Beef. Bacon. Onion. Wine. All coming together. This will be made again.

daring kitchen, april

This month's challenge was one reminiscent of the Food Network show 'Chopped', in which contestants open a basket full of mandatory ingredients and then must wow the judges with their dish. So instead of a cuisine type or a new technique, this month we had to do just that - make something from what was provided. At least there was no voice saying "twenty minutes on the clock!" 

Our April 2012 Daring Cooks hosts were David & Karen from Twenty-Fingered Cooking. They presented us with a very daring and unique challenge of forming our own recipes by using a set list of ingredients!

The recipe had to be created using one item from each of three lists:

• parsnips, eggplant (aubergine), cauliflower (the "vegetable" list)
• balsamic vinegar, goat cheese, chipoltle peppers (the "strong flavour" list)
• maple syrup, coffee, bananas (the "weird" list)

I lobbied with my family for a few days suggesting eggplant, but to no avail. Even my brave taste testers were not keen on that, much as I plied them with descriptions of ratatouille and said that I was sure we could find out something good. In the end, I caved and went for the cauliflower. The goat cheese's tang got me thinking it'd be great with the sweet maple syrup, so those were my other choices.

The cauliflower was steamed in some beef stock left over from my Saucy project (see the other blog entries here), then a Mornay sauce added over top before baking for a bit of a gratin. I do like cauliflower, and the cheesy sauce was a nice addition to it.

The maple syrup came from a friend's brother's operation in Québec, a lovely medium syrup. I figured this would match well with venison, so out of the freezer came some boneless venison loin chops from D's hunt in the fall. This meat is beautiful, lean and dark - and given that D hunts it on our land, it's about as local as it comes. The venison was seared, then finished to medium-rare in the oven while I made sauce.

The sauce was simple, but the ingredients definitely made it: I started with some duck demi-glace I had made before (yay for crazy things like that in my freezer!), then added the maple syrup. The flavours blended well, but it needed to be brightened so I used the acid of balsamic vinegar for that. A little reduction, and it was ready to go. The chops were topped with a slice of goat cheese, and then the sauce. 

All the testers agreed it was good, but they still didn't trust me with eggplant. Maybe next time. Thanks for another great challenge!

saucy: a culinary project, take 2

This week the sauces were for beef. Three more down in one meal. The recipes for these came from the Sauces book, which is fast becoming a little treasure on my shelf. I love that the index has the standard listing, as well as a second index with sauces arranged under what to serve them with. Having duck? Here are the ones to have with it. Love it.

1. Sauce Albert (Velouté)
This is actually of British origin, and named after Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert. Royalty, even! It's quite simple to make and tasty with beef. Technically it's an English bread sauce, or sauce bâtarde, as the thickening comes not from a roux but from simmering bread crumbs in the mixture.

This sauce started with chicken stock and horseradish, which reduced before cream was added. After more reduction, it was put in a blender and processed for a minute before straining through a sieve. It returned to the pan and bread cubes (baguette) were added. After simmering for ten minutes, an egg yolk and mustard powder were whisked in until it had, and I quote from the recipe, "the consistency of oatmeal". May not sound appetizing, but it was delicious.

It was a nice change from a straight dollop of horseradish on beef. While I like the taste of that, it's very strong. Sauce Albert has a more mellow, complex taste. It was wonderful on the beef tenderloin, and would make a great topping for a gourmet burger. 

2. Béarnaise (mayonnaise derivative)
Okay, emulsion sauces. This was a new category. I've made one of these before when I made hollandaise, so the technique was not entirely new. Béarnaise dates to the 1830s, made and named in honour of King Henri VI. Good with beef, or, according to the Sauce Bible, always served with châteaubriand. Which I have no idea how to make.

Starting with wine vinegar, shallot, and tarragon (which smells an awful lot like black licorice. Interesting!) which simmered and reduced before being cooled, egg yolks and water were added before whisking continuously while the mixture heated slowly in the pan. It's fun to see the sauce emulsify and thicken while you cook, just like the recipe says (okay, 'fun' might be strong. But I liked it). This took about 10 minutes.

To finish the sauce, clarified butter was added. I'd prepared this earlier, basically melting butter before carefully pouring off the olive-oil-coloured clear liquid and leaving all the other stuff (what is that, exactly?) behind. The butter was gradually whisked into the sauce to make a mayonnaise-textured, pale yellow sauce. A little lemon juice to finish it off, and there it was. 

Delicious, and maybe even worth learning how to make châteaubriand to have it again with that.

3. Bordelaise (demi-glace derivative)
Bordelaise literally means "Bordeaux style", reflecting the use of the Bordeaux wines in it. While there are plenty of red wine based sauces, the defining ingredient in a Bordelaise is beef marrow. That squishy stuff inside the soup bones is full of deep, rich flavour.

It started with shallot, peppercorns, and a Bordeaux red wine. This was reduced, beef stock (made the other day!) was added along with a bouquet garni, and simmered some more before being strained. Those sieves have never seen so much action.

I'd bought big soup bones and had managed to chip the marrow out out of them with a paring knife before learning a nifty trick that purports to let you easily pop it out of the bones. Oops, lesson learned for next time. The marrow had soaked for hours, then was blanched and then added to the sauce in progress. Some butter was added in, and the sauce was done.

While the idea of eating the marrow had me intrigued and maybe a little squeamish, the sauce had an amazing flavour. These sauces take time to make, but the end result shows the time. Savoury and delicious.

We had all three at a family dinner. While the girls and I liked each sauce, D was mostly 'meh' on them (for him, really, the best accompaniment to meat is: more meat). He prefers the straight taste of good beef cooked well, and I definitely can't fault him on that. 

And now I'm curious to try more recipes with marrow. Eating marrow was always something I associated with the primeval, as evidence in prehistoric digs that the people had had tools to split bones and extract it. Might be worth checking out. It seems that doing these sauces has me adding as many things to my Oh-This-Would-Be-Cool-To-Try list as I am finishing on it.

saucy: a culinary project, take 1.5

This was a single-sauce meal (imagine that!), one I've made before in different versions. With Parmesan and garlic on pasta, with mozzarella on lasagna, with cheddar for good old-fashioned mac & cheese.

Mornay Sauce (Béchamel)
A traditional Mornay uses Gruyère and Parmesan and dates back to the 1800s in restaurant use. It may possibly go back to even the early 1600s - named after the duc de Mornay, though then it would have been based on a velouté rather than a béchamel as béchamel had not yet been invented. Hmm, the things you learn. 

Of course given the different tastes of cheeses, this sauce has a huge range of uses. For this use, I made croque-monsieur sandwiches, which I'd never had. And I found that I had been missing out.

Beginning with a roux (mine cooked into the blond stage), milk was added and the sauce thickened. Shredded swiss cheese and a bit of salt and pepper finished it off. Done!

Sandwiches: also simple. Bread plus sliced black forest ham, buttered and grilled. Then the Mornay sauce was added to the top, a little more cheese for good measure, and under the broiler. They were quick to make but made for a perfect lunch with a salad. Delicious! 

These, I decided, are what grilled cheese sandwiches dream of growing up to become.

saucy: a culinary project, beef stock

How to make stock: toss bones of some poor decimated animal carcass in a pot, and boil the crap out of it for 12 hours. Or, buy a can.

Okay, not quite how I've done it. Though I will confess to letting it boil too hard, or for too long. Oh, something smells good this morning. Oops, forgot that pot overnight...

I enjoy homemade chicken and turkey stock, which are wonderful for soups and risottos, and have made duck stocks as well since we raised our five last summer, but have never really made a nice beef stock. I tried it a time or two. The smell wasn't nice, there would be this foam on top that, to be honest, was a little creepy - beef bubbles? - and buying the can was so much easier and tastier.

But, since I'm trying to do the sauce thing right, I figured I should make a proper beef stock. So, consulting my handy Sauces book (oh, dear little book,I fear for you. Books I use too often in the kitchen rarely escape unscathed. And you are so cute!), I read up on stocks. And in keeping with the variations-on-variations thing that is an understandable product of centuries of amazing chefs doing amazing things with food, there is more to stock than meets the eye - err, tongue. There are white stocks, and brown stocks, and demiglaces, and glaces; chicken, beef, veal, vegetable, fish, even lobster stocks. And they all (of course!) have subtle and not-so-subtle differences, depending on how the bones are prepared, what is added, and how concentrated the end result is.

The beginning - bones ready to be roasted

I kept it basic - a brown stock from beef bones (thank you, Farm Boy store!). Big chunks of bones with marrow are the start for this, and they were roasted in the oven, which led to a false advertising dispute when I had to reveal that there was not, in fact, roast beef for dinner. Roasting the bones brings out their flavour and gives the stock its rich color (hence the 'brown' stock, versus 'white' stock, made from unroasted bones). The recipe I used was for veal stock, but veal bones were not to be found. For that matter, neither was the half of a calf's foot that the recipe called for. I wasn't too upset about that.

Roasted bones plus mirepoix

A mirepoix (mix of carrot, celery, and onion) was added and the roasting continued, then the bones and mirepoix moved to my stockpot. The fat, and there was plenty, was poured off, and white wine added to deglaze the pan. 

The stock begins while the fond reduces.

Deglazing is a bit of culinary loveliness in itself. When the meat cooks, bits of caramelized yummyness stick to the pan. When wine or other liquid is added to the pan and heated, the bits (called the "fond") release and the flavour can then be incorporated into a sauce or stock. It's getting the most out of it.

The wine and bits from the pan simmered to reduce the wine by half, then this was added to the stockpot. Cold water topped off the lot, and it was brought to just barely a boil, then simmered for 10 minutes. I waited for the nasty foam to appear, but only a teensy bit did and really, it looked less threatening in smaller quantities. The final addition to the pot was mushroom, tomato, garlic, and a bouquet garni - a lovely little package of herbs wrapped in a section of leek and tied with string. Cute and easily removed all in one. Score!

Then, the simmering. For two hours. Not ten hours. Not a rolling boil, just gently simmering away and getting brown and rich all the while. The end result was strained, chilled, and packed into nice little containers in the freezer for use in sauces.

Last stage of simmering. Look! No nasty foam!

A lot of work, definitely, but much of it was of the wait-and-cook type. Certainly not as convenient as a can, but the rich layers of flavour are sure to be a nice addition to the sauces I'll be making.