two days, we watched butchery of a rump and loin of beef and we made Bœuf buourguinone with pearl onions, button mushrooms, croutons, and lardons (that’s bacon bits to my friends out there at home!) and Contrefile de boef rôti et ses accompagnements: carottes glacés tournees, haricot vert, and pommes châteaux (roast beef with turned and glazed carrots, french green beans, and roast potatoes) and pommes à la vapeur (steamed potatoes for the bourguignon). We also watched entrecôte sautée à la bordelaise, which is pan fried sirloin steak with a red wine and shallot sauce, as well as stèak au poivre (pepper steak) and pommes darphin (sort of like mini-hashbrowns), pommes frites (deep fried potatoes), pommes pailles (potato straws), pommes gaufrettes (waffle fries), and pommes allumettes (fried matchstick potatoes).
Busy couple of days!
I was thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to make roast beef. My cooking point was dead-on and got compliments. I am happy to report that even under pressure I can cook a roast beef to medium rare! The butchery was quite a sight to see. The rump and loin of beef were half the size of our demo chef! I was completely and totally awestruck watching our chef take apart such a massive piece of meat, talking and joking as he worked. His cuts were (to my untrained eye) absolutely perfect. He is a magician with a boning knife. And a hacksaw.
I’m not kidding. A hacksaw. It was awesome.
Unfortunately, the carrots needed to be turned. The potatoes also needed to be turned. Both the roast potatoes and the steamed potatoes. Not exactly my favorite activity in the whole world. Practice does help, though! I’m getting faster with this torturous activity and my vegetables actually looked like they were coming together into the correct shape! Unfortunately, for the roast potatoes, I overcooked my poor little spuds a bit, which made presentation a little unpleasant. You boil the potatoes until they’re a third of the way done, sautée them in butter, toss them into the oven for a little while, put them back on the stove, and then finish them with more butter. You want them to be smooth and golden on the outside and perfectly cooked in the center. I boiled mine too long, so they looked like they had a terrible case of facial warts and a bad fake tan.
Bœf Bourguignon was also not the end of the world! You really do want to take the time to marinate the meat for 12-24 hours before you cook it. The meat should be tender and falling apart in the end. Trim all of the fat and other various white bits off before marinating it. It’s actually a relatively simple dish! After the marinade, you sear the beef and then add flour (singer) and tomato paste, the reserved marinade liquid, and beef stock and just cook it for a about and hour or an hour and a half, depending on the size of your chunks of beef. Our pieces were pretty small, so mine was actually done after about 50 minutes. We had lardons and sauteed mushrooms with the beef, pearl onions on the side, and a crouton. Stale bread cooked in clarified butter and a little salt on both sides until it’s golden, then dried on paper towels or put it in the oven to dry it out even more. You don’t want a crouton that’s dripping with fat. For presentation, we cut the crouton into a triangle (mine was a bit too large, so my (rather flirtatious) chef for that day recut my crouton into a smaller heart shape and we dipped one side of the crouton in the liquid from the stew and coated that end with finely chopped parsley. It actually makes for a pretty lovely presentation!
We will be making the pepper steak later in the course, so here’s hoping that I remembered to take a couple of notes!