Carbonnade Flamande

It was a cold, dark night in Bruges, Belgium. We had found a tiny café with many dishes I was totally unfamiliar with, including this one. The description looked good, it was a house specialty and above all I was trying to boldly go where I had never gone before. The plate arrived, steam rising from its surface along with a complex aroma that made me grab my spoon and go for a tongue-burning taste. Rich, layered, deep. Beef, beer, herbal, onion flavors slow-cooked together to create the perfect dish for a cold night after a day spent exploring.

Some recipes add mushrooms. Others omit the bacon. Most call for dried herbs. I didn't remember mushrooms from my trip to Bruges, and these are not herbs I typically use dried, since thyme really has a much better flavor when used fresh. So 86 the shrooms, keep the bacon, change the herbs to fresh and keep them in the background. Make sure the beef stock is rich, since this is where a lot of the flavor will come from.

You could probably drink wine with this plate. I don't know why, but you probably could. But if you're staying in the Belgian mode, beer is your drink. The Brasserie d'Achouffe brews some interesting stuff, like Mc Chouffe. It's a brown ale, somehow a mix of Scottish and Belgian brewing styles that result in a smooth easy to drink beverage that complimented the beef in the carbonnade quite well, and the sauce even better, maybe because of the sauce's beer base.

This is something that is even better the second day, so I made a lot. I have another bottle of beer I'd like to try...

Carbonnade Flamande (Flemish Beef Stew)
Preparation time: about 30 minutes, assuming that you have beef stock.

Cook time: until the meat is fork tender, somewhere over two hours.

Yield: about six serving plated like above. About four people if you're being copious on the carbonnade and skimpy on the potatoes (and they're hungry).

Yes, this recipe is metric. That's because it's Belgian. It's also because here in the USA we're too scared to make the jump and join the rest of the entire planet. So, consider this a bit of a shove in the right direction. It really is an easier system to use - once you no longer have to convert from gallons, pounds and all that nonsense. Maybe more importantly, worrying about having exact quantities of ingredients is a great way to screw up a dish (unless you're baking). Use your head and go with the flow. This isn't an exact thing, since onions, garlic, sprigs of herbs, etc. don't come in uniform sizes anyway.

Ingredients

• About 1 kg beef, cut into 3 cm. cubes
• Flour for dredging the meat
• 2 medium yellow onions, chopped into about 1 cm pieces
• Several cloves of garlic, to taste, finely chopped
• 200 g or so bacon, cut into narrow strips. I used uncured.
• Olive oil for frying
• 50 cl of dark beer (Downtown Brown, in this case. Drink the rest)
• Enough beef stock to cover everything once you've added the beer. The quality of your stock will have a big influence on the quality of the dish. If you're buying your stock, check to see how much salt is in it and adjust the recipe accordingly.
• Thyme, fresh (about 1/2 sprig).
• Bay leaves, 3
• Salt to taste
• Black pepper to taste
• Fresh parsley for garnish

Process

1. Get everything ready: slice the beef into cubes (if you didn't buy stew meat, already cut), cut the onions and garlic, slice the bacon, wash and prepare the thyme, take the beer out of the fridge so it's room temperature.
2. Dredge the meat in the flour in batches small enough to fit in your pan without crowding.
3. Heat a sautoir (sauté pan), add the oil, and gently brown the meat. Don't cook it, since it will have plenty of time for that later. You just want to brown the meat/flower mixture for added flavor.
4. Remove the meat from the pan, repeat with the next batch.
5. Sauté the bacon a bit until it gives off some tasty grease
6. Increase the heat a bit, add the onions and garlic. Fry them until they're soft. They'll take on the color from the pan and pick up some of the meat flavor.
7. Turn the heat down and deglaze with a tiny bit of beef stock, scraping the pan with a wood (or other non-scratching) spatula to remove the fond (brown stuff) from the surface of the pan. I poured just enough to sizzle and lift the fond while scraping. When you're done, the pan should be clean, the onions dirty (this is good, though - the fond has a lot of flavor that you want in the cooking liquid).
8. Add the beer, stir it in. There should be a bit of foam, but it will go away as things cook. At this point, a crock pot would work, since the meat has been browned and all that is left is a long simmer.
9. Add the stock and herbs, enough to cover all the meat. 
10. Cover, and reduce the heat to low so that the liquid just simmers. A few tiny bubbles coming to the top, as long as the liquid is over 75° C (167° F) is probably ideal.
11. Check from time to time that the liquid is simmering, not boiling. Boiling the meat is bad, and will give you tough, dry beef instead of moist, tender morsels.
12. After about 90 minutes, you can start checking for doneness. If the meat is fork tender, it's ready. 
13. Depending on the amount of connective tissue in the meat, you might need more cooking time.
14. If you have a lot of sauce, remove the meat and increase heat to high to reduce it down. It's OK to boil the sauce, since the meat isn't in it. Return the meat to the sauce once it's thickened a bit and you're ready to eat.

Serve with boiled new or fingerling potatoes and garnish with chopped parsley. I peeled the potatoes after steaming them (to avoid doing the dreaded tourné cut), then put them in the sauce to heat up.

More about the Brasserie d'Achouffe here.

A Tale of Two Cabs

"What kind of wine would you like? We have two Cabernet Sauvignons - a reserve and another one that the Wine Spectator loves for the price."
"Which one is your favorite?"
"We've never had either. I know! We'll bring them both!"
"That works for me!"

Since the wines are both from California, and one is a reserve odds are they'll be big, bold monsters that would overwhelm a poor chicken or pork dish. Grilled beef, however is another story. Why not with a bold reduction sauce like moelle... yeah, that should work.

Let's use up the meager end of season tomatoes, throw in a variety of peppers from the garden, add some fresh mozzarella and extra-virgin olive oil for a starter. Top the thing with a basil chiffonade. No vinegar, so that things are ready for some wine right off the bat.

Luckily, tri-tip was on sale at the market. Prepped with a salt, tarragon and black pepper rub, it waited until the mesquite coals were sparking then off it went, seared over coals with direct heat, then moved to indirect heat to finish. Nothing like meat and potatoes, so some fried Russet potato cubes with a bit of truffle salt to round off the plate. I knew that truffle oil would be useful!

This week's quiz in cooking class will include brown stock, so might as well make some, reserve the bone marrow and use a bit of it with a reduction sauce, throw in some tarragon, add a splash of red wine to liven things up and drizzle it over the beef. Not bad. The sauce worked well to elevate the meat into something more haute cuisine than backyard BBQ, adding complexity and depth that enhanced the beef. It also tested how well the wines would cut through the fat to cleanse the palate and bring forth more flavor.

The reserve wine had lots of vanilla and oak. The other was more fruit-centric. Both were good, but didn't have much in common at the end, other than being grown in California and being mainly Cabernet Sauvignon. Both went well with the beef, but one brought out the char-grilled flavor while the other favored the meaty saucy notes.

Just to give those wines a chance to show their harmonizing skills, some cheese. We just went to Nicasio Valley and had some washed rind and some Swiss style cheeses, along with a piece of Roquefort to challenge things. Roquefort really isn't a red wine cheese - it's better with Port or sweeter wines like Montbazillac. Nobody seemed to mind, though.

To finish things off, celebrate summer's last hurrah of strawberries with a mousse. Cool and refreshing, and never mind the fat content. This is dessert, so not a good time to diet. Besides, rowing four kilometers should help us atone for our gustatory sins. Somewhat.

Heirloom tomato burgers

bun, lettuce, patty, egg, pimentón aioli...

...tomato, more tomato, a bit more...

... more tomato, lettuce, bun

How much tomato is too much? Well, when they're fresh-sliced summer heirlooms, I really don't know. The slices were about an inch thick, but the burger didn't taste over-tomatoed. It did pour juice like a tropical storm hitting a mountain range, a deluge that filled the bottom of the plate.

These patties were a premium frozen brand. Lots of flavor, but nothing beats a hand-formed patty for thickness and browning without succumbing to dryness. With a half pound of meat (before cooking) beefiness was assured. Cooked medium, since I didn't grind the meat myself and thanks to my food safety class I know just what can live in the depths of ground beef.

Here's what went into these towering tomatoey treats:


The bun
Baguette dough using pâte fermentée, sesame seeds. Nothing on the buns, so they could better absorb the juice coming off the burger and tomatoes. They were formed flat so that with a bit of squeezing it would be possible to eat this like nature intended: with your hands.

The sauce
Pimentón agridulce powder, garlic, red wine vinegar, chopped green olives (paste, really), egg yolk, lots of olive oil. Kind of an aioli with benefits.

The tomatoes
Cherokee Purple and Brandywine, lightly salted and peppered after slicing.

The meat
Simply seasoned with salt and pepper. The aioli was there to add more spice and flavor, so the meat could be simple and pure.

How could this be improved? Maybe a bit of bacon, home-ground beef that's thicker and more seasoned, maybe broil the tomatoes to intensify their flavor and reduce moisture content, a touch more salt. I could have added fresh basil but that would have dominated the tomatoes, and the goal was to let their flavor come through to accompany the meat. I left off the cheese for the same reason, but it could have had a bit of goat, blue, dry white cheddar or Alsatian muenster for more richness (and calories).

Could it have had more tomatoes? Probably. Tomatoes smash down quite well, allowing the burger to be eaten despite its impressive initial height. At some point, still undetermined, the tomatoes would simply flow out under pressure like aa lava, ending up in a somewhat chunky pile on the plate.

A Steakhouse anniversary dinner... without the steakhouse

foie gras poelé, sauce échalottes

Tchin-tchin!

Steack, beurre a l'estragon, purée, couscous

This year, we have a zero in our anniversary. With the economy being in such a sorry state, celebrating in a restaurant was not an option. Pan-seared foie gras, Champagne, USDA prime steak with tarragon butter and duck fat garlic mashed potatoes and summer couscous would have really broke the piggy bank. Doing it ourselves wasn't exactly a bargain, but then no tip, no corkage fee, no potential DUI and back inside our house in less than two minutes go a long way to make up our lack of extravagance.

Pour vous qui habitent hors de l'état de Californie:
Nos politiciens qui sans doute mangent que de "fast food" merdique, avec un gouverneur qui pensait que le foie gras était une mauvaise chose, mais tromper sa femme n'était pas, se mit ensemble pour détruire tout fabrication et vente de foie gras dans notre état, parce que nous ne devons pas avoir le droit de décider pour nous-mêmes de quoi manger. Donc, ils ont signé un loi qui transforme un délice en un délit. Des le 1 janvier 2012, nous n'aurons plus le droit de manger comme nous voulons, et si on veut du foie gras il faut le chercher dans l'état de Nevada, voir plus loin. On verra si nous deviendrons des trafiquants de foie gras, recherché par les agents habillés en noir sans pitié et sans âme. Peut-être il sera plus simple de déménager vers le Canada où pour l'instant le gouvernement laisse le peuple libre choix sur leurs préférences gustatives.

Whoa, there! Cowboy steaks is fer grillin' pard'ner!

Cowboy Steaks. Them critters is thick. Two inches. Right now, they's runnin' around two pounds, bone in. Thicker than a rattlesnake that just et a jackalope, an' that's thick. I hear some slicker down th' trail talkin' bout pan cookin' his steaks. Why, a piece o'beef like that needs flavor on the outside.

Now that there Frenchman, My-yard, he figgered out all this stuff about stuff turnin' brown and flavor. I do say that you can set that steak down in a right hot cookin' iron and you'll get lots of browning.

Yep, packin' a cookin' iron in the chow wagon is a right good idea and it's mighty useful come breakfast time when a body's yearnin' for bacon. It just ain't great for steaks, unless burned on the outside an' rare on the inside is yer idea o' fine meat. It ain't mine.

Well, even that hombre knows this, so that there slicker goes right out and throws that piece o'cow critter into an oven to finish her off slow like. Yep, ya heard that right. Ya figger some ranch hand's out there on the Goodnight-Loving Trail packin' an oven? Nope. Me neither.

Now I figger that pilgrim makes a right tasty steak in his own kitchen. He's prob'ly got a mighty fine cellar full of fancy wine from the likes o'Napa and thereabouts. But after a day a-saddle convincin' ornery critters which way they gotta go, ain't nobody gonna light an oven to grill a steak. No siree.

Ya see, we got these contraptions that work on charcoal. Pure, hard wood mesquite. Burns with a sight o'sparks, a real Fourth o'July, but boy does she grill up steak pretty. Them things look kinda like this, an' this is how ya gotta set 'em up fer grillin':

Now, ya see where it says, "sear"? Well, that's where you put the steak after you've rubbed it down with some salt, pepper, maybe some chili and some herbs you found along the trail, then let it set to warm up a bit an' dry off. Now this side's just fer brownin' and searin'. Don't do no cookin', cause if ya leave it on this side all you'll get is a burned to tarnation steak, blacker than an Angus in a tar pit and not much tastier. That's why ya have the side that says, "cook". There ain't no coals under there - so when that meat's lookin' nice and seared just slide 'er over and do her slow. Keep flipping her over and don't run off for no reason. Ain't nothin' important enough t'drag you away from that meat. Keep pokin' her with yer finger, soft is rare and hard is Too Late.

Now, don't ya go eatin' her all at oncet. That steak, she's gotta set pretty in a plate for five minutes or more. Just let the juices get back where they belong. Then carve her up and let the fandango begin! Don't try cuttin' her in two, neither. Just pick her up by the bone, whip out your ol' Bowie knife and slice her thin like prime rib. Smoke an' fire on the outside, tender an' moist on the inside.

Hanger steaks, squash, tomatoes, color theory

We're getting saturated with squash. The plants don't care; they keep producing. This time, I just julienned the vegetable and boiled it in salted water. It was just there to brighten the plate, glowing greenly between the steak and the carmine chunks of tomato added for acid and herbal notes. Braised shallots in a wine reduction nestle against the deep purplish red near-raw meat. Their function: add more umami to intensify the steak flavor and counterpoint all those veggies.

So, the color theory works like this: red/green complimentary contrast, not too strong since the squash sits way over toward the yellow side. The stronger complimentary contrast comes from the purplish meat and yellowish squash, even though the meat's color isn't as saturated. The gray plate and shallots intensify the colors, making them appear much more vivid than they would if the plate were white. Since the steak is dark and the squash light, there's a value contrast to perk things up even more. Texturally, everything is similar shapes, but different sizes.

Lucky Dog Ranch burger

Ciabatta bun, organic red leaf lettuce, Lucky Dog Ranch burger, orange tomato and scallion relish, fresh basil mayonnaise. Washed down with a Luc Pirlet Minervois, a great hamburger wine from Southern France.

These hamburgers come from cattle who roam around on pastures, living a tranquil life, munching on grass and finished on brewer's grain mix. They never even imagine those nightmare feed lots that you can smell miles before you pass them on the highway. Unstressed cattle taste better, apparently, and this meat gives weight to this claim.

Annette said, "This tastes like the beef we used to get in the market when I was little". That was a farmers' market in France, where the meat was fresh ground while you wait. The taste is complex, a bit gamy perhaps.  Rich and complex, with flavors going well beyond what you'd expect from a mere beef patty.

The goal with this burger was to let the meat shine. No Bordelaise sauce, no mushrooms. Only a light relish, a dab of freshly prepared basil mayonnaise and a thin ciabbata baked only hours earlier. Eschewing the umami-rich decadence of my last burgers, these tasted garden fresh, the grassy flavor of the lettuce mingling well with the complex, grass-fed note from the beef and the sweet-sour tang of the relish. If ever a burger could be deemed health food, this rendition should easily qualify.