Onglet à la bordelaise (avec pommes frites!)

Once again, I made Thomas Keller's "bavette" recipe. This time I used onglet ("hanger steak") instead of skirt steak, cooked it for a little longer in both the browning stage and the oven stage, used a shallot and red wine marinade, and prepared the sauce à la minute. The fries turned out better this time. Most of them were perfectly done and crisp, and I was enjoyed them without ketchup.

(This would also be nice with a mixed green salad in lieu of fries.)

Roughly, the recipe is:

Cook a half cup or so of malbec (red wine) in a pan. Light it on fire and let the alcohol burn off. Add some minced shallots, a squeeze of lemon, and a good pinch of salt. Put it in a zip lock and cool in the freezer. Season the steak, add it to the bag, and put it in the fridge for at least a few hours.

Within an hour or two of dinner time, cut the fries from russet potatoes. Rinse them well, and blanch them in 320 degree vegetable oil for about 5 minutes. (They should be golden brown, no darker.)

Take out the steak, dry it off and let it warm to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Season the meat with salt and pepper. Heat a couple of tablespoons of light olive oil in a cast iron skillet on medium heat. Add a tablespoon of butter and melt. Add the meat and brown, a couple of minutes per side, basting the meat with the butter/oil after you flip it. (Cook a bit longer for onglet, I flipped it a couple of times.)

Remove the meat to a small baking dish and cook 3-4 thinly sliced shallots in the same pan for a minute or two, then add a couple more tablespoons of butter, some thyme, and cook for a few more minutes to caramelize the shallots. Spoon the shallots on top of the meat and place it in the oven for 5-8 minutes.

Warm plates for serving.

Deglaze the skillet with a little of the red wine, reduce. Add some chicken or veal broth and reduce a little. Adjust the seasoning. This is your sauce, keep it warm somewhere.

Cook the fries at 375 degrees for a couple of minutes, remove to a drying rack and salt immediately.

Slice the meat against the grain. Plate next to the fries with shallots and sauce spooned on top of the meat.

Catch up

It's been almost a month since my last post. I'm still cooking, but I've been too busy with life and work to post.

Since then I've made a Spanish version of Chicken Paprika (I added red bell pepper and chorizo), which wasn't bad, but reminded me a lot of the Murgh Korma.

I used a Bobby Flay recipe for a skirt steak roulade with fontina, prosciutto, and basil. It was good, but it ended up a little rare in the middle. I reprized this with a beef tenderloin and italian fontina. It turned out really well, and the cheese itself was also quite good - it was melty at room temperature and had a strong flavor that reminded me of blue cheese - definitely a good match for beef, I'll have to try it on a burger someday.

In the variations on a theme department, I made a shrimp version of my Larb Gai recipe twice while Emily was away - because I was too lazy to pick up chicken, and we made Moules Marinière with clams once because Sun Fat was out of mussels (due to weather).

More recently, I made a shrimp chowder from a recipe in the most recent issue of Saveur - it was quite easy and tasty.

Finally, while Emily was working last night I made a modified version of a Gordon Ramsey recipe. I boned out a chicken thigh and leg (bask in my mad knife skillz) and rolled it around a mixture of italian sausage, basil, and currants (he called for parsley, egg, and pistachios). Then I wrapped it in leftover prosciutto (in place of bacon), wrapped it in tin foil, and poached it for 25 min. I refrigerated it to let it set, fried in a pan, and put into a 170 degree oven to rest. I made a pan sauce with dry vermouth (in place of marsala), sherry vinegar, and homemade chicken stock and made a parmesan risotto to go with it.