Monday, October 28, 2002

Tournedos Rossini, or Filet Steaks with Artichoke Hearts, Foie Gras, Truffles and Madeira Sauce. This is where reality and Julie’s pretty little JC theories diverge.  Needless to say, Western Beef was not going to solve our shopping needs for this trip.  I wasn’t sure what, short of a bank loan, would.  But as Julia puts it, “A platter of Tournedos Rossini takes the filet steak about as far as it can go.”  So, what the fuck.  You only live once, right?  Eric and I went into town to do a little shopping.  I decided on Jefferson Market, again, as the place that would mostly likely have everything I needed but not irritate me into a conniption.  And I gotta say, the shopping was painless – I mean other than the horrifying hole it left in my bank account, but fuck it, right?  Filet steaks they’ve got – big inch-and-a-half thick ones.  Artichoke – no problem.  I bought fresh peas for the side.  (At least, I think they were peas.  Neither I nor anyone I’d ever known had, so far as I heard, every bought fresh peas before.)   Foie Gras and truffles… well, here we ran into a bit of a snag.  After some hunting behind the deli and prepared foods counter (if you had enough money, you could spend your life eating the couscous salad and pesto lasagna from the prepared food section of Jefferson Market.  But could you really call that living?), they guys back there were able to hunt down a tin of foie gras, with truffles in it.  The price of the thing, which was a tad larger than a tin of tomato paste, was absolutely breathtaking.  I didn’t see any evidence of any other truffles, and I decided that foie gras with truffles in it must be good enough.  JC writes in the introduction to this recipe, “it seems too bad to compromise at all in this dish.”  Here it was, not yet two in the afternoon, and already compromise abounded.  I felt shamed and poor at the same time.  I felt a little better about my decision though when the girl at the front counter stared at the price tag on the foie gras, aghast, and pointed it out to me.  “Did you see how much this is?” “Yeah.  I know.” “What is it?” “It’s, um, goose liver.  It’s really really good.” “I hope so.” When the girl at Jefferson Market is shocked, you’re spending too much goddamned money on food.  If I’d bought a truffle on top of that I might have incited class rebellion, and rightly so.  The making of the dinner itself wasn’t so terribly hard, actually.  There was the bit with the artichoke, of course, but it’s gotten so that the process is, if time-consuming, fairly brainless.  And it’s always satisfying to do so much damage to a vegetable so obviously out to hurt you.  I trimmed it down, cooked it in a blanc – that’s water with flour paste and lemon juice, for those who do not read me obsessively every single day – scooped out the choke, sliced the heart in half horizontally.  This I then tossed with butter, salt and pepper and put in a baking dish in the oven.  I took the foie gras out of its tin.  I was almost too stupid for the can opener on this one, but I did manage to open both the top and the bottom, and then push the loaf of goose liver out onto a cutting board.  I cut one ¼ inch slice for each steak and wrapped the rest up in plastic wrap.  Anyone care for fifty dollars worth of foie gras?  The foie gras did indeed have truffle in it – a black spot like a hunk of coal in the center of each slice.  I put the slices in the top of a double boiler and basted it with Madeira and beef stock, then set it over lightly simmering water.  With shame, I skipped over the instruction to slice the truffle and put them in a pan with Madeira and butter. I shelled the peas, which is a very satisfying thing to do.  I boiled them in salted water briefly, then drained them and let them wait. The steaks I cooked the ways JC always has me cook steaks – quickly, in butter and oil, over high-ish heat.  As always, I feared I had not cooked them enough then decided that a little raw meat never hurt anyone and took them out of the pan.  As always I poured out the fat and cooked down some beef stock (plus the juices from the foie gras), and as always, I got distracted and let it cook down a little too much. (Hey, so aside on the foie gras in my double boiler – when I took it off the simmering water, and took off the cover, I could swear I could see a little bubbling in the Madeira.  I.e., boiling.  This is the same double boiler that has twice burned my chocolate.  What is going on here?  Have I performed some wicked alchemy on my double boiler attachment?!) Anyway, I poured some Madeira blended with cornstarch into the pan and let that simmer a tad.  Somewhere in here, probably when the sauce was cooking down too much, I had tossed the peas in a hot pan with butter, sugar, salt and pepper, and they were now cooking briefly.  I took the saucepan off heat and melted some butter into the Madeira sauce. This is how you build Tournedos Rossini:  put a half an artichoke heart on each plate.  But a filet steak on top of each artichoke.  Lay a slice of foie gras on top of each steak and, if you aren’t poverty-stricken bastard like me, top each with slices of truffle.  Pour over the sauce and put some peas alongside. What can I say?  Tournedos Rossini is about how you’d expect – pretty damned good, and almost too much too handle.  The foie gras is velvety and rich, and tastes of truffles.  In fact, I think the truffles in the foie gras had pretty much given all the flavor they had to the foie gras, because when I bit into the black coal-like bits, I didn’t taste much of anything.  One suspects D’Artagnan doesn’t use just the very best quality truffles to stick in cut-up bits into its tinned foie gras.  ( “I should have used real truffles,” the narrator moans, beating an imaginary head repeatedly against an imaginary wall.  “I’m a bad girl, bad, bad….”)  The buttered artichoke heart, it turns out, serves to cut the richness.  The peas, actually, are perfect for this.  I have always rather hated peas, little green sacs of wet flour is what they’ve always tasted like to me, but I guess maybe I’ve never had fresh peas, and I’ve never had peas with Tournedos Rossini.  They’re exactly what’s needed here.  That and perhaps a triple by-pass. My husband is looking a little peaked by the end.  Maybe I am too.  Hey did I forget to mention that that morning I had made Oeufs en Cocotte, or eggs baked in ramekins with cream and butter?  With curry cream sauce? Emily AW – who had spent the night on our couch after entirely too much vodka and Buffy – and I ate two each, Eric ate three.  Oh and for lunch that day, Eric and I went to the Corner Bistro, home of “New York’s Best Hamburger”, and ate a bacon cheeseburger each, plus a big plate of fries. For those of you keeping score, that would be – eggs baked in cream with curry sauce for breakfast, bacon cheeseburger for lunch, filet steak with artichoke hearts and foie gras for dinner. I need to get a bathroom scale.  And a cholesterol test.  Stat. 7:45:40 AM    comment []