Translation: Beef Sauté with Cream and Mushroom sauce.
In other words exquisite; this recipe marks the first in my study of European cuisine and I have to say, it puts things to a good start. Julia Child recommends serving the dish with steamed rice or potato balls sautéed in butter, but instead I served it with egg noodles.
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| Ingredients |
The Ingredients for this recipe were pretty basic, I could find everything that I needed at Whole Foods. However since the meat is cooked very rare, she suggests buying two and a half pounds of fillet mignon. Instead of paying $75 for it, we bought one fillet mignon (probably about half a pound) and the rest was a less expensive (still very high quality) steak.
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| Mushrooms and Shallots |
The first step is to prepare a mushroom and shallot sauté, seasoned with salt and pepper.
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| Mushrooms and Shallots |
Once the butter and oil were melted, and the foam was gone, I added the mushrooms. Once they began to have good color, I added the shallots and cooked for a minute longer. After they were seasoned, I put them on a side dish.
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| Preparing the Beef |
I started by removing the outside fat, and then I cut the beef in to 2 by 1/2 inch pieces. After that I patted them dry with paper towels then began heating the oil and butter.
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| Cooking the Beef |
The beef is supposed to be very rare, so it was cooked at high heat for only a couple minutes on each side. I had never cooked meat like this before, and the process was very stressful. At first it was hard to keep it from being over cooked, but with a few trials and about a million grease burns, I was able to get it right.
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| Cooked |
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| The Sauce |
The Sauce was very simple yet delicious. Beef stock was added to the same pan that the beef cooked in before so that it could intake the drippings from the meat. I waited for the stock to boil down, and then added the cream. After that I added a cream and cornstarch mixture and then a dry wine, and let it all simmer for about a minute.
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| Incorporated |
After the sauce was ready, I removed it from the heat and added the beef and mushrooms.
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| Finished Product |
The meal was wonderful, the sauce complemented the meat and mushrooms well, and the taste of wine was very prominent. The sauce was creamy while the meat was tender and rare. I garnished it with fresh parsley and seasoned as needed. I recommend this recipe to anyone in the mood for an exquisite French dish.
