by Julia Child
A cover for the casserole
Dry the beef thoroughly on paper towels. Film the pan with ⅛ inch of oil and set over moderately high heat. When very hot but not smoking, brown beef lightly on all sides, season with salt and pepper, and place in casserole. Brown the vegetables lightly in the same fat, season, stir in the herbs, and strew the vegetables over, under, and around the beef. Drape the fat over the meat. Spoon oil out of frying pan, pour in bouillon and boil for a moment, scraping up any coagulated cooking juices. Pour liquid into a cup and reserve for Step 3.
2) Roasting the beef—35 to 45 minutes in a preheated 375-degree oven
At least an hour before serving, cover casserole and set over moderately high heat until beef is sizzling, then place in middle level of a preheated oven. Turn and baste beef once in 15 minutes, and rearrange fat on top. Meat is done to very rare at 125 degrees on a meat thermometer and to medium rare at 130; juices will run rosy red when meat is pricked, and roast will feel slightly springy rather than squashy (like raw beef) when pressed. Set beef on a warm platter and leave at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes while finishing sauce.
3) Sauce
Optional: 1 medium tomato
The bouillon from Step 1
½ Tb cornstarch blended in a cup with ¼ cup dry port wine or vermouth
Salt and pepper to taste
2 to 3 Tb soft butter
A hot sauce boat
Tip casserole and skim most of fat off cooking juices; bring to the boil. Chop optional tomato and add to casserole along with the bouillon. Boil slowly for 4 to 5 minutes to concentrate flavor. Remove from heat, stir in cornstarch and wine mixture, and bring to the simmer. Simmer 2 to 3 minutes until sauce turns from cloudy to clear. Carefully correct seasoning. Just before serving, remove from heat and beat in the butter, a tablespoon at a time. Strain into sauce boat, pressing juices out of vegetables.
4) Serving
Cut and discard trussing strings, and arrange beef on hot platter with whatever vegetables or garnish you have chosen. Pour several spoonsful of sauce over the beef to glaze it, and serve at once. (If beef is to be carved in the kitchen, place on a carving board that will collect juices; rapidly cut meat into slices ½ inch thick and rearrange on warm platter with garnish around them. Pour carving juices over meat, and pass sauce separately.)
(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: If you cannot serve immediately, remove strings but do not carve meat; after it has rested 10 to 15 minutes and the sauce is made except for the final butter enrichment, return meat to casserole and baste with the sauce. Set cover askew and place either over barely simmering water or in an oven no hotter than 120 degrees. Meat can stay thus for a good hour before serving.
VARIATIONS
Tenderloin Baked in a Cloak of Mushrooms or of Matignon
To give the meat more flavor, you may either slice it and re-form with a stuffing between each slice as in the beef en feuilletons, or you may use that same mushroom stuffing but spread it over the whole filet as illustrated. In this second case, however, you must have caul fat to hold the mushrooms in place. Rather than mushrooms, you may wish to use the matignon of diced cooked carrots, onions, celery, ham, and wine in Volume I, page 303. In any case, when the meat is wrapped, brown it as described in the preceding recipe, and casserole-roast it in exactly the same way.
Filet de Boeuf à la Bourgeoise
[Tenderloin of Beef with Onions, Mushrooms, and Olives]
Whether casserole-roasted, plain roasted, or braised, a filet of beef surrounded with onions, mushrooms, and green olives is as attractive to look at as it is to eat. The garniture is cooked in advance, and simmers in the sauce to blend flavors before being arranged around the beef; you may wish to add sautéed potatoes to the platter, or the zucchini timbale. Cook the filet and prepare the sauce as in the preceding Master Recipe, or braise it with or without a stuffing as described in Volume I, page 303. Prepare the garniture as follows:
1) Preparing the garniture
the small onions:
1 lb. (2 cups) small white onions about 1 inch in diameter
A saucepan of boiling water
A 6- to 7-inch frying pan or saucepan (no-stick recommended)
2 Tb butter and 2 tsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Pinch thyme
½ cup bouillon
A cover for the pan
Drop onions in boiling water, bring rapidly back to boil, and boil 1 minute. Drain, and refresh in cold water. Shave off 2 ends and peel onions; pierce a cross ⅓ inch deep in root ends. Heat butter and oil in pan; when foam is subsiding add onions and sauté over moderately high heat to brown lightly. Reduce heat, add rest of ingredients, cover, and simmer very slowly for 20 to 30 minutes, or until onions are tender when pierced with a knife. Set aside with cooking juices.
the mushrooms:
½ lb. (1 quart) fresh mushrooms
2 Tb butter and 2 tsp olive oil
An 8-inch frying pan (no-stick recommended)
2 Tb minced shallots or scallions
Salt and pepper to taste
Trim and wash the mushrooms; dry in a towel and cut into quarters. Heat butter and oil in pan until foam is subsiding, add mushrooms and sauté over high heat, tossing frequently, until mushrooms begin to brown. Reduce heat, add shallots or scallions, and toss a moment more. Season lightly, tossing, and add mushrooms to onions.
the olives:
4 to 5 ounces (1 to 1¼ cups) pitted green olives, medium size, about ¾ inch long
2 quarts simmering water in a saucepan
Drain and wash the olives; drop into simmering water. Simmer 10 minutes, to remove excess saltiness. Drain, rinse in cold water, and add to onions and mushrooms.
(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: Garniture may be prepared in advance.
2) Serving
The cooked filet of beef and its 2½ cups or so of sauce
The onions, mushrooms, and olives
2 to 3 Tb soft butter
When the beef is done and the sauce is made, add the onions, mushrooms, and olives to the sauce and simmer 3 to 4 minutes to blend flavors. (If meat is being held in casserole, return sauce and garniture to it.) To serve, place meat on platter, and dip out the onions, mushrooms, and olives with a slotted spoon, arranging them around the beef. Beat the enrichment butter into the sauce a tablespoon at a time, spoon a little over the beef to glaze it and pour the rest of the sauce into a warm gravy boat. Serve, along with whatever other vegetables you may have chosen.
Filet de Boeuf en Feuilletons, Duxelles
[Tenderloin of Beef Sliced, Stuffed with Mushrooms and Roasted]
By slicing the raw tenderloin, seasoning each slice, and spreading it with wine-flavored mushroom duxelles and then re-forming the roast, you will have a deliciously flavored tenderloin that practically serves itself. For this you should have as long a piece of the main tenderloin muscle as possible with no under-turning tail, so that you will have large slices. (Drawings and discussion of tenderloin are at the beginning of this section.)
For 16 slices ½ inch thick, serving 8 to 10
1) The duxelles stuffing—for 1½ to 1⅔ cups
1 lb. (2 quarts) fresh mushrooms
A heavy-bottomed 8-inch frying pan (no-stick recommended)
3 Tb butter
¼ cup minced shallots or scallions
⅓ cup finely minced mild-cured ready-cooked ham
1½ Tb flour
⅓ cup dry Madeira (Sercial)
⅓ cup block foie gras, liver paste, or very finely minced cooked ham fat
1 egg yolk
½ tsp dried tarragon
Salt and pepper to taste
Trim and wash mushrooms. Cut into 1⁄16-inch dice, using either a big knife or the vegetable mincing attachment of an electric mixer or a food mill if you wish. Twist a handful at a time in the corner of a towel to extract as much juice as possible. Heat butter to foaming in frying pan, stir in mushrooms, shallots or scallions, and ham. Sauté over moderately
high heat, stirring frequently, until mushroom pieces begin to separate and start to brown lightly (5 minutes or so). Sprinkle in the flour and stir over moderate heat for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, blend in the wine, and stir again over heat for 1 minute. Remove from heat, beat in foie gras, liver paste, or fat, the egg yolk, tarragon, and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
2) Stuffing and tying the filet of beef
The heart of the tenderloin, 8 to 10 inches long and as even in diameter as possible (2½ lbs. or more)
A double thickness of well-washed damp cheesecloth large enough to envelop beef. (See also notes on caul fat.)
Salt and pepper
A tray and a pastry brush
Rendered goose fat, pork fat or cooking oil
The duxelles stuffing
White string
With a very sharp knife, cut the meat into 16 even slices, each about ½ inch thick, setting them aside in the order in which you cut them. Lay the cheesecloth on the tray and paint with fat or cooking oil. Salt and pepper each slice, spread with a tablespoon and a half of stuffing, and re-form the roast, arranging the slices against each other on the cheesecloth. Tie one loop of string around the length of the re-formed roast to hold the slices against each other, then stretch the cheesecloth tightly over the meat to enclose it. Twist each end of the cheesecloth closely against each end of the meat; tie securely with string. Then twist a tight spiral of string around the circumference from one end to the other and back again, so that meat will keep its shape. It will look like a fat sausage about 12 inches long and 4 inches in diameter.
(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: When stuffed, tied, wrapped in plastic, and refrigerated a day before roasting, it will pick up added flavor.
3) Browning and cover-roasting the beef—at least 1 hour before serving
Brown the beef and the aromatic vegetables that accompany it as described in the Master Recipe, Step 1. (It will brown perfectly well in its cheesecloth covering.) Roast, as directed in Step 2, counting 30 to 40 minutes and leaving the meat red-rare (125 degrees on a meat thermometer). Remove from casserole as soon as it is done, and leave at room temperature for 15 minutes while finishing the sauce described in Step 3.
4) Serving
Set beef on hot serving platter and cut string and cheesecloth, carefully pulling them out from around and under the meat (15 minutes rest will have drawn slices of meat together). Spoon enough sauce over meat to glaze it nicely, arrange around it whatever garnish you have chosen, and serve, passing rest of sauce separately. Server need only spread top of meat apart with large fork and spoon to show location of each slice, which is then served with its share of duxelles stuffing.
(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: Use the same system as in the Master Recipe, but do not untie meat until just before serving.
Filet de Boeuf en Croûte
[Tenderloin of Beef Baked in Pastry—Beef Wellington Brioché]
We do not know whether the English, the Irish, or the French baked the first filet of beef in a crust, but we can be certain that the French would not have named it after Wellington. It is a remarkably handsome, sumptuous dish when properly made. Most good recipes specify a whole piece of tenderloin that is preroasted 25 minutes, cooled, surrounded with a mushroom and foie gras stuffing, then wrapped in French puff pastry and baked. We think it a great improvement to substitute brioche dough for puff pastry: fully risen brioche dough is deflated, thoroughly chilled, then rolled thin, draped over the meat and baked immediately before the dough has a chance to rise again. The resulting crust is beautiful to look at as well as being light, thin, cooked all the way through and delicious to eat; this is never the case with puff pastry, which cannot bake properly under such circumstances and is always damply dumpling under its handsome exterior. Another improvement is to bake the tenderloin in slices with stuffing in between, as in the preceding recipe: the serving is easy and the taste is vastly improved.
VEGETABLE AND WINE SUGGESTIONS
An important dish like this should be surrounded with few distractions; we would suggest only something green and fresh like buttered new peas or green beans, broccoli flowerettes, or, in season, sliced, fresh, green asparagus spears tossed in butter. Again, a fine red Bordeaux-Médoc would be an excellent choice of wine.
THE SAUCE
Anything as extravagant as this filet de boeuf demands an unusually good sauce. We suggest 2 to 3 cups of the brown sauce or the sauce ragoût in Volume I, pages 67 and 69, simmered several hours for maximum flavor; it will then be further enriched with the cooking juices and deglazing wine from the beef, Step 1 in the following recipe.
For 16 slices of beef ½ inch thick, serving 8 to 10
1) Preliminaries—to do in the morning or the day before serving
½ the recipe for pain brioché dough (½ lb. flour)
One of the brown sauces described in preceding paragraph
2½ to 3 lbs. of the heart of the tenderloin, sliced, stuffed, wrapped and tied (filet de boeuf en feuilletons, Steps 1 and 2)
Rendered goose or pork fat, or cooking oil
A shallow roasting pan
½ cup dry port wine or Sercial Madeira
Prepare the dough as described, letting it finish its second rise in the refrigerator. Then deflate it, cover with plastic wrap, a plate, and a 5-pound weight (pieces of meat grinder) so that it will not rise again; refrigerate. Make the brown-sauce base and refrigerate. Prepare the stuffed filet as described, baste well with fat or oil, and place in roasting pan. Preheat oven to 425 degrees, and set rack in upper-third level. Roast the beef for 25 minutes, basting and turning it several times. Transfer beef to a platter or tray (reserve roasting pan) and let meat cool to room temperature. (If you are preroasting a day ahead, cover and refrigerate the meat after it has cooled, but set at room temperature for 2 hours before final baking in Step 3, for accurate timing.) Spoon fat out of roasting pan, pour in wine and boil down by half, scraping up any roasting juices with a wooden spoon; scrape liquid into the sauce base.
2) Enclosing beef in brioche—1 to 1½ hours before serving, and just before roasting
The cool, room-temperature, preroasted beef
Heavy shears
The chilled brioche dough
Flour, a rolling surface, a rolling pin, a ravioli wheel, a small knife
An oiled jelly-roll pan or pizza tray (raised edges needed to catch roasting juices)
Egg glaze (1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water in a small bowl)
A pastry brush
Optional: a meat thermometer
Preheat oven to 425 degrees and slide rack onto lower-middle level. Set out all the equipment and ingredients listed. Cut wrapping and string from beef. Working rapidly from now on so that brioche dough softens as little as possible, roll ¼ of the dough into a rectangle ¼ inch thick and the length and width of the beef. Roll it up on your pin and unroll it onto the oiled pan.
Its most attractive side up, place the beef on the rectangle of dough. Trim off excess dough from around the beef.
Roll the remaining dough into a rectangle ¼ inch thick and large enough to enclose beef (probably 18 by 8 inches), roll it up on your pin and unroll over the beef.
Trim off any excess dough and reserve for decorations. Tuck the covering dough against the bottom rectangle of dough and under bottom of meat, sealing edges with your fingers. Paint dough covering with egg glaze; in a moment paint with a second coat.
So that any decorations on the crust will show after baking, they must be either deep cuts with raised edges, or dough paste-ons. For instance, you may wish to lay on strips of leftover dough in a design, and paint with egg glaze.
Decorate blank spaces by cutting into surface of dough with scissors, a knife, or the metal end of a pastry tube, making definite edges that stick up. (Cuts are made after glazing, so that the cut portion of the dough will remain pale, accenting the design when dough is baked.)
Immediately the decorations are complete, set beef in oven. The object here is to make sure th
e dough remains a crust, a thin and crisp covering; if it rises, it will be thick and bready.
3) Baking—30 to 40 minutes
Bake in lower-middle level of preheated 425-degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until pastry has browned nicely. Lower thermostat to 350 degrees for rest of baking, and cover crust loosely with a sheet of foil or brown paper if it seems to be browning too much. Indications that the meat is done are that you can begin to smell the beef and the stuffing, and that juices begin to escape into the pan; meat thermometer reading for rare beef is 125 degrees.
4) Serving and ahead-of-time notes
A hot platter or a board wide enough to hold beef and removed top crust
A flexible-blade spatula
A hot sauce in a warmed bowl
The hot accompanying vegetable
Serving implements: a sharp knife for cutting the crust, and a serving spoon and fork
When beef is done, remove from oven and slide onto platter or board. Beef will stay warm for 20 minutes; if you still cannot serve it, set in a warming oven no hotter than 120 degrees.
To serve, cut all around the crust and half an inch up from its bottom. Lift the top crust off onto the platter, and cut into serving portions. Separate the slices of meat with spoon and fork and cut down through the bottom crust so that each slice is served with a portion of stuffing and crust. Spoon a little sauce around the meat, and add a piece of the top crust.