This being our first non-vegetarian truffle meal, we decided to do a few of the really classic truffle dishes and see what they were like. Chicken with truffle under the skin, truffle-stuffed pasta, roast beef with a perigueux sauce. Not being able to leave well enough alone, we fiddled with the recipes a little. But that's the On Golden Fond way.
And of course, there was more truffle. Buckle in for a big post, folks.
Seriously, that is maybe 15 grammes. 20, tops. A mere $35 or so.
We started with some non-truffle based appetisers. A million Frenchmen would argue vehemently that there is no such thing as too much truffle, and I would not argue with them. But if there was such a thing, then two dinners in two weeks with every course truffle-driven and full of eggs andcheese might be it.
The first appetiser was salmon tartare canapes, made by me. Take some finely minced salmon fillet (skin, remove bones, roughly chop, finely chop, finely chop, repeat until a fine mince has been achieved) mixed with finely chopped cucumber and chives and with just a tad of finely shredded preserved lemon skin in it to provide citrus and sharpness. Portioned out in the trusty 1/2 ounce baller and plop! out onto a Chinese spoon. In hindsight, a tiny bit more lemon would not have gone astray, but I was happy with the fresh but rich salmon meat and the crispy and sharp cucumber, chives and lemon.
The next appetisers were by Manto and Moulard. At the front, tarts of finely chopped homemade smoked duck ham and soft feta sprinkled with chervil. In the second row, tarts of caramelised red onion, lightly warmed Chabichou, a creamy, salty, slightly sharp goat's milk cheese and topped with a little roasted red bell pepper. Crispy casings, fillings soft and firm, sweet and sharp and smoky. Good tarts.
And finally, a truffle dish! This one was a collaboration between Manto and me. Earlier in the day I made some chicken leg sausages :
- 500g minced chicken leg meat (most poulterers will have some or can make some for you. Leg meat is important as it has more texture and flavour than breast meat.)
- about 100g of pistachios (weight in the shell), shelled, peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 shallot, peeled and very finely minced
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- a couple of pinches of salt and white pepper
- mix them all together
- form into two large, thick sausages about 4-5cm in diameter and about 15cm long
- wrap them firmly in glad-wrap and tie off the ends
- poach at 85 C for about 25 minutes; let cool in the wrapper.
- unwrap, finish in a frying pan or oven to brown and crisp the skin a little, then cut into nice even slices about 3cm thick. Keep the ends as a little bonus to yourself for being such a good host!
Then in the evening, we jointed up some 500g poussin, taking out the spine and the outer wing joints but leaving in the ribs. They help keep the shape of the breast, and also to keep moisture in. The hind quarters were reserved for another day.
Each breast had a thin slice of truffle and a little butter pushed gently under the skin. We cooked them in a pretty hot (190 C) oven to get the outside nice and brown, about 20 minutes plus a couple under the grill
Meanwhile, we were reducing some chicken consomme with some dry white vermouth for the sauce with a little finely grated truffle, and sauteing some spinach with some (cooked) chestnuts. While the poussin was resting, the roasting juices went into the sauce. A nice spoon of veggie in the middle of the plate, a slice of sausage on one side and a cute little poussin breast on the other, and a dash of sauce. The poussin was meltingly tender and infused with butter and truffle, the sausage gave a firmer texture and more complex meat flavours, and the mild sweety nuttiness of the chestnut was a balancing component between the rest. The spinach .... was green. A most satisfactory dish.
The next dish was ravioli filled with ricotta, prosciutto, sauteed mushroom, nutmeg (because you have to put nutmeg in ricotta ravioli), salt and pepper and of course truffle. Dennis is quite the pasta whiz (I fondly remember some poppy-seed pappardelle he made for us long ago) and he served the pasta with a sage and brown butter sauce.
Cooking a fresh-made, soft-filled pasta for seven people at once is not without risks, and maybe a few bits were a little soggy. Overall though the pasta was well textured and the filling rich and complexly flavoured. And who can say no to sage and brown butter sauce? Not I.
The next course was the main and I had decided to do a very classic roast fillet of beef with perigueux sauce. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but your dear old Ecumer has a bit of a patchy record as far as quick-cooked lean meat goes. The astute reader will have noticed that almost everything I put on the pages of the blog is a slow braise or a forgiving roast like chicken. I reckon I get lean roast meat or steaks right about half the time, and overcook the rest.
But here I was, cooking for some of my most discerning friends, and with some very expensive ingredients. How can I combine the certainty of slow cooking with the quality of ingredients that I needed to do justice to the truffles? I did some research and found ...
Four Hour Roast Beef Fillet.
Yes, you read right, four hours.
- get a full beef fillet from your friendly butcher. This was a 1.7kg Angus fillet and it was a tad north of $30 per kilo. Not dry aged or wagyu or anything fancy, although if you had those I expect it would be even better.
- heat your oven to 70 C. Yes, 70 C. I strongly recommend getting an oven thermometer to check the calibration of your oven, because there's a good chance it wasn't designed to go that low and you may need to adjust your dial. Gladly ours checked out nicely - 70 C on the dial, 70 C on the thermometer.
- take your lovely fillet and fold the floppy end in on itself until it makes an even shape. Tie it along its length with string so it keeps its shape.
- give it a quick spritz or rub down with olive oil and put it into the oven. It's a bit of a leap of faith but trust me.
Here's what it looks like at the start :
Here's what it looks like after about an hour. Slightly darker, starting to dry. A little clear juice or maybe olive oil coming out.
Put your thermometer in at about this stage and monitor the temperature of the thickest part. When it gets to 150 F/65 C take it out and it will be a perfect rare - medium rare all through, with no overcooking around the edge. Cover with foil and keep in a warm place for at least 15 minutes to rest. And it does need to be a warm place or else the beef will quite quickly cool down. With the low heat and gradual cooking, there will be little if any carryover heating, so take the meat out at whatever temperature corresponds to your desired degree of doneness.
I got caught up in other things and forgot a couple of hourly photos, so here's the final product.
It was brown and slightly crusty on the outside and a dead even perfect rare pink all through. The slow drying of the skin had given it a deep beefy flavour, almost like biltong, with no charring at all. A lot of recipes call for a quick pan sear (or blowtorch) to provide that char, but I didn't have a pan or grill that could cope with a slab o' beef that size. The meat was, cut into slices about 7-10mm thick, almost cuttable with a fork.
Meanwhile, make your perigueux sauce. Well, my version of a perigueux sauce.
- reduce 500ml basic veal stock, 250ml dry Madeira ( I used a Barbeito 5 year old Verdelho Madeira, which is medium dry with a fine body) down to about 1/3 of their volume.
- add 1 cup veal glaze (I use Bowles which you can get from many markets). Reduce another 50%.
- taste as it may need a bit of salt. The sauce needs to be able to stand up to some pretty flavoursome beef.
- saute some mushrooms, about 1 cup roughly sliced, and put them in the sauce. Button are okay, portobello are good, porcini are brilliant (if using dried, rehydrate, finely chop, and put the soaking water in with the stock and reduce proportionally), shitake are a bit out there but would be interesting.
- add about 15-20g of finely grated truffles to the sauce and warm through to release the truffle odours and flavours.
- we just spooned some sauce and mushroom onto the plates, topped with a few slices of beef and garnished with a little chervil. I do like chervil for red meat.
The sauce was rich & thick with reduced veal stock, had a touch of sweetness from the Madeira, and deep earthiness from the truffles and mushrooms.
Not too shabby for a chap who struggles with red meat, eh? I was quite chuffed.
And of course we had some sides.
And of course we had some sides.
A vegetable salad of peas, fresh broad beans and shaved courgettes with a herb vinaigrette (chervil, parsley, chives - all the leftover herbs we had from garnishes. Leftover herbs are great in salad dressings).
Blanched carrots finished in a saute pan with a little butter and sugar - not quite Carrots Vichy but close.
And a stovetop potatoes au gratin, finished in the oven and under the grill while the beef was resting. One of the things I didn't entirely account for in the plan was that the four-hour beef would monopolise the oven at a very low temperature for most of the afternoon. The chicken was cooked in a convection microwave, which got the job done but took longer than expected, and the potatoes had to be done on the stovetop and just given a little grill time to brown up. Maybe a little too much grill time going by the photo above.
Last up of all was a dessert by the Perigueuxse of cider and calvados jelly layered in a straight sherry glass with some calvados pannacotta, served with a shot of iced green apple schnapps. The dessert was light, with clear fruity flavours and a mild element of cream, offset by the acid in the schnapps. Being the precise young cook that she is, she did a practice run early in the week (to the delight of her workmates) so that the pannacotta was letter-perfect - no graininess, an even set throughout - and the jelly was soft and luscious too. The recipe was from "Decadence" by Philip Johnson if you would like to find it.
A balanced exit to a big and serious meal, but we all had a great time. We hope you enjoyed reading about it and may decide to help the Australian truffle industry next year with a truffle meal of your own.
Totally worth it,
Ecumer
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