CSA week four - Filleto tartufato with parsley salad

I mentioned in the most recent CSA week-opening post that I had rich and classy beef dish planned to be accompanied by a parsley salad. This is that. I've been accumulating small amounts of high-tone ingredients that I've bought on impulse and this is a good chance to put them all together to strut their stuff. I've got here a six ounce filet mignon (cut from the three pound piece of grass-fed tenderloin I got a good deal on last month), a summer black truffle (second best to winter black truffle but only half the cost at around $12 per truffle), a small bottle of foie gras (mushy from the preservation, but the flavor is comparable to fresh. And at $13 for 1.7 ounces rather more affordable.), and some condensed veal demi-glace (only five bucks and enough for several recipes).

I'm using a recipe from the Gilded Fork at Culinary Media Network. I've poked around a bit on their website and I'm still not clear just who these people are or what their deal is. Kind of a web-only alternative to Gourmet magazine I think.

Anyway, the recipe isn't too complicated. I seasoned the filet with just salt and pepper and sautéed it in olive oil and butter in a small cast iron pan for four minutes on one side and three on the other. (The recipe says: "Cooking time will depend on how well-done you desire the steaks." Great guidance there. Thanks a lot.) My cooking time was a pure guess but by chance, I managed to get the filet done to just about medium; a little further along than I generally prefer but quite palatable.

In another pan I sweated the truffle, shaved thin, in butter. (The recipe actually calls for a full ounce of truffle for each steak. That's eight whole average truffles and assuming they're calling for black winter truffle, about $100 worth. There's certainly not that much piled up in the picture with the recipe so I'm going to assume some screw up here and that using just one truffle is sufficient. After a few minutes I added a good splash of red wine (They call for Madiera but Fresh Market didn't have any so I just used a Cab that goes well with red meat. Probably nothing like what was intended, but I like how it turned out.) and the reconstituted demi-glace and turned down the heat to just keep it warm.

When the steak was done I removed it to a warm oven and added slices of foie gras, seasoned and floured, to the pan and turned up the heat to quickly brown it on both sides.

And that's it. The steak gets topped by the foie gras and the sauce (mounted with a pat of cold butter) is poured on top. Easy-peasy.

The salad is just as easy. A big handful of parsley leaves (stems kept for making soup) roughly chopped, tossed with a sliced shallot and maybe a half Tablespoon of capers. Seasoned with salt and pepper and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

I shouldn't have used the black plate; I don't think you can get a really good look at the assembled dish. Sorry.

So is it everything it's cracked up to be? Could anything possibly be? It's certainly got Arby's roast beef sandwich beat; I'll give it that much. I want to say it's one-note, but that's not quite right. Each component is evident and compliments the others with its own individual take on that note: buttery, earthy, fatty, meaty, rich (with some tanginess from the wine). It's a chorus, but monotonic; like Gregorian plainchant. OK, I just had a bit with the right amounts of everything at the right temperature and the layers of flavors and textures really are very good indeed. I'm now I'm willing to put it on par with a well-made cheesesteak. I don't know if I made the sauce quite properly and I certainly didn't use the heap of truffles the recipe calls for so it wouldn't be fair for me to write it off on the basis of my own efforts. And maybe it's unfair to expect it to be transcendent just because of its pricey ingredients. If I see it on a menu and I've got the cash to burn I'll consider it, but I'll probably order the lobster.

The parsley salad is the steak's diametric opposite: light, crisp and tart. A lovely accompaniment. Going back and forth between the two is a bit much, but the bread acts as a mediator as it did with the marrow bones the salad was invented to accompany. I think it would go nicely with carpaccio or as a garnish to a bowl of beef bourguignon.

I've still got lots of parsley left; I'll have to look into other parsley salads as I don't think I'll be eating any more beef for a little while now.

Beef Stroganoff

The pumpernickel bread I baked recently isn't the most versatile type of bread out there so I did a bit of research for what goes well with it. There's smoked fish and cream cheese so I had a bit of that. There's Nutella. (Actually, the combination of a sale on Nutella and poor impulse control was the initial prompt to choosing that sort of bread to make in the first place.) It sounds a bit odd, but when you remember that there's cocoa in the pumpernickel recipe it does make sense. There will developments on that combination later--predictable ones if you've been reading for a while--but you know from the subject line that the immediate topic is beef stroganoff.

There's a surprising amount of variation in recipes out there. For one thing, I didn't know that mushrooms are recent addition. I cobbled together my own version out of three recipes that had appealing elements. (Cream of mushroom soup was right out.) I liked 2/1 beef to mushroom ratio and the seasoning in the recipe from Simply Recipes. Cook Like Your Grandmother had an interesting marination technique. And Dave Campbell, chairman of the Culinary Arts Department at SUNY Cobleskill added some intriguing French elements. Here's my composite recipe:

Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons butter
1 pound tenderloin, cut into thin strips
1/3 cup thinly sliced shallots
1/2 pound not-quite-so-thickly sliced cremini mushrooms
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 small handful cornichons, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

0. Take everything out of the refrigerator so it'll be at room temperature when you need it.

1. Layer beef and shallots on a relatively deep plate or shallow bowl (so as not to spill any released juices) salting as you go. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit on the counter for an hour.





2. Melt 3 Tablespoons of butter in a large cast iron pan on medium heat. Scrape off the shallots into a bowl. Turn heat up to just below high and brown beef in batches. The meat should be sufficiently salty already but check. Add pepper to the bowl of cooked meat.





3. Reduce heat to medium high and add shallots. Cook shallots until they're nicely browned, about four minutes. Add to bowl of meat.





4. Melt another Tablespoon of butter in the pan. Add mushrooms after the butter stops bubbling but before it starts to brown. It's not a very long window of time. Toss mushrooms immediately to coat, but then only stir occasionally as the mushrooms cook down. Cook for four to six minutes until mushrooms are cooked down but not shriveled up. At some point add tarragon and nutmeg.

5. Remove from heat (or turn heat to low if your pan isn't cast iron), let cool slightly and add sour cream and mustard. Mix thoroughly. Stir in cornichons, beef and shallots. Test for seasoning and adjust.

6. Serve garnished with a bit more tarragon (fresh if you've got it) over egg noodles and/or with pumpernickel bread.


Before I get to how it turned out, a note about the beef. I had every intention of talking about how the much-cheaper-than-tenderloin flank steak is perfectly fine for this sort of quick browning application, but when I got to Fresh Market I found that grass-fed tenderloin was on sale for less than flank steak. The butcher was even willing to cut it up so I didn't have to buy the whole 6-pound loin (although I think that's just because nobody in the meat department could find out the actual price for smaller pieces after I had been promised such a thing was possible). But since it was only $8/pound I bought fully half of it even though I rarely eat beef and when I do I it's cheap tough stew meat. I hope months in the freezer won't do it too much harm as I think it's going to take a long time for me to use it up.

Right, how did the stroganoff turn out? Pretty darn well, I'd say. The marination let the shallots and beef meld flavors and the mushrooms and sour cream absorbed flavors from both from bits left in the pan so the dish was well unified. Of the additions, the tarragon and the mustard give a little sweetness and vinegary zing that nicely round out the other elements of the dish. The cornichons and nutmeg I could lose. And the dish does indeed work nicely with the pumpernickel. The dense chewy bread is a pleasant textural addition and the subtle sweetness pairs well with the creamy meatiness of the dish so success all the way around.