Wednesday, February 05, 2003

Saute de Boeuf a la Provencale. After the disastrous dinner at Helen’s on Friday, I redeemed myself a bit with the third and final beef sauté, this one with a tomato sauce and olives.  I began with the tomato sauce, Coulis de Tomates a la Provencale, which I’ve made before, and which is a really nice basic sauce – maybe the Italians among us would scoff, but for not much effort or all that much time, it’s really flavorful.  Slowly cooks some minced onions in olive oil.  Add a bit of flour and cook for a couple of minutes.  Stir in chopped tomatoes – I used canned because it’s February and there’s no use pretending I’m going to get decent fresh tomatoes, and besides if I can avoid peeling tomatoes the happier we’ll all be – some sugar, some garlic, bay leaf, parsley, thyme, fennel seeds, dried basil, a bit of saffron, and a bit of coriander.  The only thing I didn’t have was dried orange peel, which is a shame – I bet it would be really good.  I don’t know how to obtain dried orange peel.  I bet I could figure out how to dry it myself, but leave me alone, I work a full-time job.  Simmer all of that for ten minutes, covered, then for another half hour uncovered, stirring and adding water if it begins to scorch. While the sauce was simmering I first pitted some black olives with my fancy-dan new olive pitter, a gift from Eric’s folks for Christmas.  It’s a nifty thing, though because I bought these teeny-tiny French petite olives, it didn’t work perfectly.  The whole olive kept dropping through the little hole the pit was supposed to go through.  But better than hacking at the things.  Then I chopped and began to brown the meat.  I had again bought thick sirloin steaks rather than the tenderloin butt Julia suggest, since it was about 1/3 of the cost, though still far from cheap.  I cut them into large chunks, a couple of inches in diameter and almost an inch thick.  These I browned in hot butter and oil, just a couple of minutes on each side, until they were brown and sealed, but still good and pink inside. Then Buffy started, and I was drawn irrevocably to the television.  God, it’s so sad – this show is breaking my heart.  They keep on spitting out a pale ghost or two of brilliance among the boring, expositional, talky-as-shit chaff (mix metaphors much, there, Julie?) – just enough to keep you hanging on.  Yes, indeed, I do believe Buffy has jumped the proverbial shark.  I’m going to place the crossing of the Rubicon-into-crap at the point where Spike tried to rape Buffy.  Ah well. During the commercial breaks I managed to start the rice and boil down some vermouth in the pan the beef had been cooking in.  After the travesty was finally over I put two cups of the tomato sauce in with the syrupy cooked-down vermouth stuff and let that simmer a bit.  Put the beef back in and let that heat back up for a few minutes.  Scooped the beef onto plates, topped with some petite French black olives and chopped parsley and chives.  Rice and salad on the side.  Done. Yes, as it is not too hard to guess, this beef sauté is much better when you don’t cook the beef down to soggy shoe leather.  I probably erred a bit on the other side – at least one of my beef chunks was rather close to the raw end of the spectrum – but I was a snarling, chewing mountain cat in a previous life, and raw meat does not bother me.  The tomato sauce, which was good anyway, was even better with the syrupy vermouth and beef juices in it, and the olives – which I may have mentioned I have a bit of an issue – added just a bit of bite.  Quite good.  And by JC standards, pretty light – no cream, and only two tablespoons of butter in the entire meal!  Nice to be eating something that tastes of tomatoes.  I’ll have to go back, though, at some point, and make the previous beef sauté, the one with bacon, mushrooms, onions and red wine, doing it right this time. After, we sampled the Charlotte Malakoff aux Fraises.  And it was pretty durned good, actually.  Perhaps the ladyfingers were a tad soggy, but at least they didn’t taste burnt and nasty.  The only thing is I ought to have ground the almonds a bit finer – they left a bit of a gritty feeling.  Next time I’ll try the coffee grinder.  The next charlotte has chocolate, so obviously looking forward to that. So, that’s it for the beef for now – No More Cow Meat, not for six months or more.  Next up, I swear to god something like TWELVE leg of lamb recipes. Dear God. Isn’t it comforting to know that in this day and age there is no longer any such thing as debtor’s prison? 7:40:10 AM    comment []