Next ~~ 1853 ~~ Filet Mignon & Port Wine Sauce

Grant Achatz’ blazingly original “Next Restaurant” (watch their great video HERE) will be creating its menus around a single year and place starting with 1912, Paris. Brilliant. You know how I love history. All the food and drink will be based on meticulously researched food and beverages (hello Escoffier!). They will move backward and forward (yes, Hong Kong, 2036) in time as well as from place to place. I can’t wait to see what they come up with when they open Fall 2010. Next Restaurant has inspired me and it just happens that I have a reason to want to go back to---- 1853!!!

In 1853, Men wore plaid

1853 Fashion Plate

Women wore…bedspreads?

1853 Fashion Plate

The first fire engine was used (horse drawn, of course)
La Traviata premiered
Vincent Van Gogh was born
The 1st patent for a machine to make envelopes was granted
Harriet Tubman began the Underground Railroad
Stephen Foster wrote “My Old Kentucky Home”
Elisha Kane’s Artic Expedition left NY
Admiral Perry arrived in Japan
Cornelius Vanderbilt owned the first yacht to make a trip around the world. 

Also -- a pre-phylloxera port was casked in 1853 from grapes from the Cima Corgo.
148 years later it was rediscovered and bottled. 9 years after that I used some of it to make filet mignon with port wine sauce.

I have been a port lover most of my adult life. Once a year, I splurge on an old bottle of vintage port around birthday time. It takes me a few weeks to drink it and I enjoy every last sip from my favorite port glass. Another personal tradition that has developed is the making of filet mignon with port sauce and Stilton.

I buy the best beef on the planet ( grass-fed from the wonderful Grazin Angus Acres in Union Square NYC), and use some of that birthday port to make the sauce. This time, instead of a 37-year old port I have a sample of 157-year old port. The sauce was incomparable with layers of flavors that amplified the greatness in the beef and the Stilton custard, the beef was richer, the custard more unctuous and luxurious.

The Reserve King Pedro V (you can read its amazing history HERE although prices have gone up! ) named after the Portuguese King whose reign began in 1853, came along with my 1850 D’Oliveira Verdelho Madeira. Mannie Berk of the Rare Wine Company let me compare the flavors of these two different fortified wines of great age.

Their personalities are so vibrant and powerful that even after a century and a half they are both magnificent with taste patinas that are complex and rich like the finish on 18th c furniture.

"Exquisitely deep, luminescent mahogany color. The nose is deep and full, with ambrosial scents of walnuts, figs, crème brulée and tar." The port smells like history. Close your eyes and listen to Heifitz play La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin HERE … there, that’s the feeling… a luminous sweetness tempered with supreme virtuosity.

Alexis Soyer

Yes, history… in 1853 Alexis Soyer of London’s famous Reform Club was Victorian England’s hot chef, but he was so much more... a real food hero of his day (like Jamie Oliver in our time!).

Soyer's Stove

He made major innovations in the way the troops were fed during the Crimean war, inventing a camp stove that was still in use till the late 20th century and he helped to end rampant food poisoning and malnutrition in the army (probably saving as many lives as the more famous Florence Nightingale was doing in the field hospitals). He had just published his cookbook, “The Gastronomic Regenerator”in 1852 and this would have been a popular treatment for beef filets or escalopes in 1853:

(*A la Bohemienne marinade is a brine with mace and bay, thyme, marjoram and brown sugar!)

Sarah Hale

Also hot off the presses would be “The Ladies' New Book of Cookery”
 
By Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788-1879) in 1852. After penning “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, Hale was the editor of Godey’s Ladies Book (the most widely read magazine in America) for 40 years. She helped make Thanksgiving a national holiday conducting a 16-year campaign through 5 Presidents (Abraham Lincoln finally agreed to the holiday 1863, believing it would be a healing gesture after the Civil War). She had these great recipes in her book:

Esther Copley

In what would have been an old favorite by 1853, “The Housekeeper's Guide” by the prolific English children’s author and pamphleteer Esther Copley from 1838, I found this:

Alessandro Filippini

Alessandro Filippini, Delmonicos chef from 1849-62, used this sauce:

My recipe is inspired by these 19^th c. classics.

Filet Mignon with Port Wine Sauce for 2

2 filet mignons
Salt (ideally smoked salt) and freshly ground pepper
1 T oil
3 T butter
1 T shallots, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/8 t dry mustard
pinch of cayenne
2 T port ( Rare Wine Co. lovely 1983 Warre Vintage Port* would be best, but you can use Ruby Port or Madeira)
1/3 c demi-glace (or 2 c stock reduced to a thick glaze)
¼ c mushroom liquor** reduced to 1 T (optional)
1 sprig marjoram or thyme

Bring the filets to room temperature and season them all over with salt and pepper then sear with oil at medium high.

Add 1 tablespoon of the butter and marjoram or thyme and reduce the heat to medium-low. Baste the steaks with butter while they cook. Cook for 5-8 minutes for rare. Transfer them to a plate and tent.

Sauté the shallots and garlic then add the demi glace, mushroom reduction, mustard and cayenne and the port and warm (or—add the stock and raise the heat to high, and cook until reduced by three-fourths and then add the port).

Strain the sauce and add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 piece at a time (honestly, the sauce is so delicious, you could skip the extra butter and lose the calories!)

Plate flan and place filet on top, spoon sauce over all.

*1983 Warre Vintage Port is available from The Rare Wine Company for $69.95. Contact them at: sales@rarewineco.com

**mushroom liquor can be made by adding water used to re-hydrate mushrooms and the stems and peelings of mushrooms cooked together for ½ an hour and strained. This freezes beautifully in ice cube trays.

Stilton Flan for 6

2 lg Eggs, 2 yolks blended
2 c ½ & ½
pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste
1 c Stilton Cheese – crumbled (around ½ lb.)

Whisk eggs together. Warm cream, add Stilton, remove from heat and cool to warm and add the eggs. 

Taste for salt,  Stilton is salty and you probably won’t need it Gradually whisk in the yolks into the mixture . Pour into buttered ramekins and put into pan with boiling water going about 2/3rd’s the way up the dishes. Bake 350º for 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Morels ~ Creamed and Deep Fried with Beef on Pastry

The first time I saw a morel mushroom I thought it was a monster from space and couldn’t believe it wasn’t poisonous or an alien invader. It didn’t have that classic ‘toad stool’ mushroom shape and it surely did not have the soft brown texture I was used to in cultivated mushrooms. No wonder, the morel or Morchella is an Ascocarp like the truffle and not technically a mushroom. What I also didn’t know is that it should never be eaten raw as they have a small amount of toxins in them that are removed through cooking. Once cooked… they are heaven.

Morel Mushrooms

I have had the good fortune to get my hands on a package of dried morels thanks to the savvy folks at Marx Foods. The lure is that if I can make something sublime with these dried puppies I can win the motherload of a passel of fresh morels. Now that is a challenge worth going to the mat for!

Marx Food Mushroom Challenge

I tried to remember all the wonderful morel dishes I’ve been lucky enough to make or taste and went to Mr. Mushroom, Jack Czarnecki to jog my memory. I have had his Joe's Book of Mushroom Cookery for 20 years.

I did remember that it was best to hydrate the day before, strain and save the water and put them in the fridge wrapped in a towel… they will nearly have the texture of fresh. I can’t remember who told me this but it works.

One of my favorite morel dishes is simple creamed morels on toast with asparagus on the side. It’s a classic. However, since this is a contest, I figured that I would up the ante and make it my own with a few well-chosen additions.

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Ross ashby thinking cap

On goes the magic thinking cap. My ex’s mom, the wonderful Marion, surprised me once by making her version of strawberry shortcake. I am a mid-western girl and she was a southerner from Lookout Mountain. She made the dish using piecrust “cookies” instead of a fluffy biscuit underneath that mound of cream and berries that I grew up with. It was delicious and these “cookies” have become a workhorse of my pantry. I make a dozen and keep them in the freezer. I take them out and pop them in the toaster oven and use them to dress up leftovers, make nearly instant potpie crust or slather them in jam or berries for dessert. I decided to use them with my morels. Morels and beef in a cream sauce with fried crispy morels on top and asparagus on the side because, well I love asparagus and morels and asparagus go together like angels and singing. It is also a combination that screams Spring Is Here!

The really fun website The Great Morel.com had some wonderful tips and suggestions about a zillion ways to fry morels. I looked through their suggestions and one of them raved about an English [I went to Heston Blumenthal to get a little help with proportions] batter for fish with rice flour and vodka and beer that they used for morels--wow. I think the unctuous creaminess of the beef and morels and the crisp top and bottom are a devastating combination. The batter makes the most shatteringly delicate crust you have ever seen… like the world’s best tempura! I fried some parsley in it and I used it with shrimp, it worked on everything I tried.

18^th c pewter plate

Morels and Beef on Pie Crust w Cream Sauce & Deep- Fried Morels

Serves 3-4

Piecrust Cookies.

Preheat oven to 375º

1 c flour

¼ c whole-wheat flour

½ t. salt, fresh marjoram

2 T lard (from Flying Pigs )

8 T butter

¼ c ice water

Blend the flours, salt and marjoram in the food processor. Add the frozen butter and lard in small pieces and pulse a few times. Remove from processor and add the water, a little at a time stirring to blend with a fork. Add enough water so the pastry holds together when you grab some and squeeze. Put ¼ c four on a piece of wax paper. Grab 6-8 handfuls of the dough and place on wax paper. Take each and smear. Pile up the flattened pieces and stack them into a mound—flatten slightly. Place in fridge for 1 hour in the wax paper. Remove from fridge. Roll the dough out to your favorite thickness (less than ¼”). Using a cookie cutter, cut out circles and place on cookie sheet. Prick the cookies with a fork and bake 15 minutes or until golden. This makes 12 -3” cookies.

Fried Morels (this batter can do many mushrooms with left over for many other good things!)

Batter

1/4 c flour

1/4 c rice flour (I whirred brown rice in the coffee mill)

1/4 t baking powder

1 T powdered pecans (same coffee mill trick)

1t. honey

¼ c vodka (* you can add more, but make sure it isn’t too much, it drips off the mushrooms!)

¼ c lager. (*you can add more, but make sure it isn’t too much, it drips off the mushrooms!)

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. Add the vodka and stir. Add the lager just before using. Dip the 8 morels in the batter and fry in 2 “ of vegetable oil till brown and crisp. Do this after the rest of the dish is all ready to go or do it and put them in a 200º oven on paper towels over a rack till ready to use.

Creamed Beef and Morels.

1 pound beef in 1” pieces **

1-2 T oil for frying

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

a few sprigs fresh thyme

1 T peppercorns, crushed

1 c red wine

3/4 C stock (chicken, beef or veal)

¼ c morel soaking liquid, strained

1 oz dried morels (re-hydrated) all extra water gently squeezed out – about 2 cups, reserve 8-10 for frying

2 T butter

1 large shallot, chopped

2 T cognac

1 T madeira (I used The Rare Wine Company'sBoston Bual)

1 c cream

1 T ancho pepper that has been re-hydrated and pureed

Chopped parsley and Thyme or Marjoram

1-2 T Green Peppercorns in brine

Salt the beef, then sauté in oil till browned. Remove from pan and sauté onion and garlic. Add thyme and peppercorns. Deglaze pan with wine and add stock and mushroom liquid. Return the beef to the pot, cover and cook the beef in a 250º oven for 2 hours, remove thyme.

** Should you desire you could use Filet Mignon. If you choose to use this, cook it very little. Reduce the sauce on the stovetop and only add the beef again to warm at the end. Strain the beef and reserve cooking liquid.

Melt butter and sauté shallot. Add morels and stir gently until water is removed. Add cognac and Madeira and deglaze. Pour in the reserved cooking liquid and reduce. Add the cream and pepper puree and the beef and cook about 30 minutes on a low heat (if you are using the filet option, only put the beef in after the sauce has reduced—then just warm the beef through—keep it medium rare). Add chopped herbs and green peppercorns.

Serve over pastry rounds and top with fried mushrooms.

I wanted to thank Sarah at All Our Fingers in the Pie for this lovely award.

I’d like to share it with a few of you who have really been wonderful blog inspiration and who have shared great stories and encouragement and or expanded my international horizons!

Barbara @ moveable feast

Moira @ tertulia des sabores

Lee Ann @ powderate

Sarah @ four pounds flour

And a new one I love, from the wonderful former editor of House & Garden, Dominique @Slow Love Life

reading it is like having coffee with a wise and brilliant friend in a sunny window seat on a perfect Spring day.

The Magic of Madeira & Beef

Like an alchemist revealing the secret of making gold… I’m going to share a cooking secret with you. Let’s talk about Madeira.

Eric Asimov got the ball rolling a few weeks ago in the New York Times with a piece declaring his newly found love of Madeira. He had just discovered it wasn’t just a dessert wine and that it was brilliant with savory dishes. This was preaching to the choir for me… I love Madeira and have been cooking with it for many years. Without knowing, I had discovered it as a child, poking around my grandfather’s cellar. I found a set of bottles with unreadable labels particularly tempting. I pulled a cork and took a whiff and then a swallow of sweet wine. It wasn’t until this year that I found out what I had liked was Madeira…very, very old Madeira. This is the stuff that dreams are made on.

Photo from Finest & Rarest Vintage Spirits and Liqueurs

I found that out via another New York Times article about Mannie Berk and his remarkable Rare Wine Company. Thanks to him I got a taste of a 1912 gave me a Eureka, “this is it” moment. The beautiful scent of age was there with a flavor that is deep and complicated and full of grace This is the wine of the old Ashley Wilkes’ South.

I had made a note of him and his company thanks to that article in 2007, and waited for the right moment to put it to use. This blog seemed a good place to start sharing my fascination with Madeira and using fine quality wines for cooking. You may say that a bottle of supermarket variety will do you just fine… but please believe me, you are wrong! Great older Madeira will make your dish remarkable. Would you use a drugstore chocolate bar in your favorite mousse? Would you use a gray tomato for your famous BLT? No!!!!

In the NYT article, Asimov said: “… in so many ways Madeira turns conventional notions of wine upside down. It wasn’t precisely brown. At the center it was a sort of honeyed amber. Extending to the edges it brightened into a reddish-orange, like a fantasy sunset. Maybe I just imagined these shades, just as after I took a sip I thought I heard music, and saw skyrockets and rainbows as the flavors rose through my mouth.”

Mannie Berk is a Madeira fanatic. He began Rare Wine Co. in 1989 with an incredible haul of 400 cases of great old Madeira from Hedges & Butler’s London cellar in 1986. By 1998 he was blending his own Madeiras using 15% of 50-60 year old wine as part of the blend and issuing 3 styles: Charleston Sercial is the driest, New York Malmsey the sweetest and Boston Bual somewhere in between. I have tried them all and they are superb. At around $50 a bottle they are great for drinking and cooking (before you roll your eyes at the expense, just remember you use so little in a recipe!). For the extraordinary, go to the website and take a gander at the ancient Madeiras . I can tell you wow wow wow!!! Of course the wine is brilliant to drink.

However, with these magnificent specimens you can take your cuisine up into the stratosphere. I used some of the 1912 D'Oliveira Verdelho in my sauce for this Beef Wellington and my guests all agreed The fortified wine Madeira was popular with the American colonies thanks to a 1665 British policy that banned importation of European products unless they were shipped on British vessels from British ports. Fortunately, Madeira is not part of Europe. Although a Portuguese colony, the island of Madeira is off the coast of Morocco so it escaped the onerous shipping regulations and it’s product went straight to America. Its flavor owes a lot to shipping practices as well… it was discovered that the casks did best when shipped through the tropics. The heating (called estufagem) created the velvety texture that Madeira is known for and heating is part of the aging techniques employed today.

Madeira is so much a part of American history, it was used for the toast at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, probably using glasses like these:

photo courtesy Mannie Berk

Whether for drinking or using to add amazing depth to your food, Madeira is a new delight waiting to be discovered and once opened, it lasts forever! I used it to make my Beef Wellington. You should too!

1814 Portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence

The dish was named after Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington who won the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He was quite indifferent to food, so much so that his cooks often gave notice, despairing of using their culinary talents in his household. It is probably apocryphal then that he had anything to do with naming this fillet of beef, wrapped in puff pasty. Perhaps it was so called because in its larger version the finished product looks like a highly polished riding or Wellington boot.

For my version I have combined elements of many recipes from Martha, Cooks Illustrated and others to come up with one I liked. Everything was from scratch save the puff pastry( I used Dufour brand and it worked out splendidly) and pâté (I used Les Trois Petite Cochon’s Mousse du Perigord). If you would like to make the puff pastry from scratch, make a pound of puff pastry).

Beef Wellington

3-4 Lbs Beef tenderloin (I used grass-fed from Grazin Angus Acres). Place uncovered on a wire rack in the fridge for 24 hours before cooking to dry-age the beef, flip it once. Tie the beef with butcher’s string so it is a like a log if that hasn’t already been done.

2 Tb Olive oil

salt and pepper rubbed over the surface of the meat (around 2 t. of each)

8 oz pâté de foie gras ( smooth not coarse)

1 package Dufour puff pastry *or make your own puff pastry

1 egg

1 recipe for duxelle*

1 cup of beef glace de viande*

1/3 c Madeira (I used 1912 D'Oliveira Verdelho, But Charleston Sercial would be lovely)

4 T butter

Saute´ the beef in the oil in a searingly-hot cast iron skillet… letting it heat 4 minutes or so. Do 1 minute per side till the beef is thoroughly brown but not cooked.

Allow to cool completely, then remove the string and cover in pate´.

Roll out the pastry to a 12 X 15” piece (or do 2 of them and divide the pastry accordingly--2 will be easier to handle). Place on parchment paper. Cut off a little pastry to use as decoration. Place the duxelle over the pastry. Lay the meat on this and fold to cover. Brush with egg-wash on top and on the seam. Press to enclose. Dress the pastry with reserved dough cut in decorative shapes and adhere with the egg and brush the egg on the decorations as well.

Chill for 20 minutes or so before putting in the 400º oven for 20 minutes for rare. Turn in the oven every 10 minutes so the meat cooks properly. Let it rest 20 minutes before serving.

Warm the Glace de viande. Add the Madeira and the butter to melt and serve with the beef.

Duxelle

1 pound Portobello, shitake, mushroom mix

2 T unsalted butter

1/4 cup finely chopped shallot

1/4 cup heavy cream (Milk Thistle Farm)

3 T Madeira (I used Boston Bual)

2 T finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

2 tsp. coarsely chopped fresh thyme

2 tsp. marjoram

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

Trim ends of mushrooms. Break stems and caps into small pieces. Finely chop the mushrooms in a food processor. Squeeze dry in a clean kitchen towel. Melt unsalted butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add shallot; cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add mushrooms, and cook, stirring often, until beginning to brown, 5 to 6 minutes.

Remove from heat. Stir in heavy cream, Madeira, parsley, and fresh thyme; season with coarse salt and freshly ground pepper. Let cool. Spread out to 8x10” on a piece of parchment paper, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (this can be done the day before).

Glace de Viande

2 lbs oxtails

2 lbs beef bones

1 carrot

1 onion

1 T tomato paste

1 bay leaf

1 garlic clove

handful of parsley

pepper

2 c homemade chicken stock

1 C red wine

Roast bones, meat and vegetables for 50 minutes @ 450º. Deglaze with chicken broth, wine and add 2 quarts of water. Simmer for 5-6 hours. Cool and strain, discarding the solids. Chill and remove the fat. Simmer till reduced to 1 cup. You could buy 2 quarts of beef stock and reduce it yourself… just make sure it is salt-free if you do.

*Duck Fat Puff Pastry

Butter layer

1 lb + 3 ½ T (510g) cold unsalted butter

2 t (10 ml) Lemon juice

1 c (130g) bread flour

pinch of salt

Dough

3 c (400 g) bread flour (freeze it)

3 ½ T (55g) duck fat, frozen)

2 t Salt

1 c cold water (start with 3/4 and add as needed, you may not need a whole cup)

Mix the butter and the flour and lemon and salt into a paste, make a 6” square and chill on wax paper till firm

Knead very sparingly and refrigerate.

Make the dough into a rectangle and put the butter in the center in a diamond... fold the dough around it like an old envelope, bringing the 4 outer points to the center of the butter.   If it’s warmed up, chill it. Otherwise roll it to a rectangle and fold it like a brochure and chill ½ an hour. Roll it out and do it again 6 times, resting for ½ an hour to an hour in the fridge each time (if you have a cold kitchen, less time is needed).

I left mine overnight after the 5th turn and made the last turn the next day. I rested it one more hour and rolled it out.  You will have enough for 3-4.  Freeze what you do not use.