Category: food

Categories
food shallot wine

bordelaise sauce miller and carter style

When you order the ‘steak experience’ at a Miller and Carter restaurant you get to choose a sauce. I’m a big fan of the beef dripping sauce but the fruity bordelaise is a good choice. Want to know how to make it at home? This how you can make the bordelaise sauce Miller and Carter style.

Bordelaise sauce is a classic of French cooking. Originating from the Bordeaux region in France, the Bordelaise sauce is a rich and luxurious creation that marries the depth of red wine with the subtle sweetness of shallots and the indulgence of butter. Bordelaise comes from using Bordeaux wine – technically if you use another wine it isn’t truly Bordelaise, but as long as you don’t tell anyone a strong red wine will give you a great sauce.

There are few key ingredients:

Shallots: begin with finely chopped shallots, which add a delicate onion flavour to the sauce. You could use red onion instead.

Butter: quality unsalted butter is key to achieving the creamy and velvety texture that Bordelaise sauce is known for. It will give it a glossy finish.

Red wine: opt for a good-quality red wine, ideally a Bordeaux or Cabernet Sauvignon, to infuse the sauce with robust and fruity notes. The key is to add it in two stages: half to make the base of the sauce that you will reduce down to a sticky glaze, then the remainder will keep the fruity, smooth flavour.

Beef stock: a rich beef stock finishes the sauce, enhancing its savoury character. If you can get veal stock, so much the better.

Before serving, taste your Bordelaise sauce and adjust the seasoning as needed with salt and pepper. Strain the sauce if you wish to remove the shallots.

Bordelaise sauce is not only a natural complement to steaks but also pairs beautifully with roasted meats, lamb, and even pasta dishes.

Can be served with tournedos rossini as per the picture below!

Want to round out your fakeaway meal? I have a recipe for beef dripping sauce Miller and Carter style, and their onion loaf.

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bordelaise sauce

Course Condiment
Cuisine French
Keyword fakeaway, red wine
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Servings 250 ml

Ingredients

  • 20 g butter
  • 2 shallots peeled and finely diced
  • 400 ml red wine typically bordeaux
  • 100 ml beef stock

Instructions

  • Put a shallow pan over a low heat and melt half the butter. Add the shallots and sweat gently for a couple of minutes until softened.
  • Add half the red wine and turn the heat up high to bubble and boil away. Make a mental note of where the wine fills up the pan to, and then allow it to bubble furiously until reduced by half. Then add the rest of the wine and continue to reduce.
  • When the sauce has reduced again by half add the stock and stir to blend in for a minute. It's finished at this point - when ready to serve take off the heat. Add the remaining butter and swirl the pan until it has melted. If you want a smooth sauce strain off the shallot, otherwise serve as is. Check for seasoning before serving.

Notes

This sauce can be made a couple of days in advance and zapped in the microwave to serve, just hold back the finishing butter. It'll freeze good too.
Categories
butter food potatoes

marco pierre white’s fondant potatoes

I’ve been browsing the BBC Maestro series; a selection of masterclasses from famous experts in their field. Filmmaking with Edgar Wright, photography with Rankin and much more besides. What caught my eye was the series of food classes with Marco Pierre White. I thought I’d try Marco Pierre White’s fondant potatoes.

Marco has a shaman-like quality in this series: wise and patient, imparting gems from his vast experience in a lifetime of kitchens. It’s serious and verging on pretentious but the knowledge he is dropping is absolute gold.

Even with this basic recipe – just potatoes, butter, water and salt – is a penitent affair clocking at over 7 minutes deliberately telling you to take your time.

I made it once and it was fine, but I’d gauged the pan wrong and it was far too large so the potatoes cooked through before they had coloured. Working on a smaller pan with less potatoes meant I could control it much more easily and they coloured a treat.

The potatoes were good – but really you’re eating about 100g butter in each bite so I’m not surprised. But they toed the line between boiled potatoes and roasted potatoes to a point where I was conflicted it wasn’t either of them. So I don’t love it, but it was fascinating. In fact it gave me an idea for two more potato recipes – including an improvement on my master recipe for roast potatoes! – so I’ll take getting inspired as a win. Probably what Marco intended anyway?

You can browse the BBC Maestro site for yourself here

https://www.bbcmaestro.com/courses

This article is not sponsored, though I note the week I publish this it’s 40% off.

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marco pierre white's fondant potatoes

An indulgent and rich side dish.
Course Side Dish
Cuisine French
Keyword pommes fondant
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Resting time 1 hour
Total Time 2 hours
Servings 4 people

Ingredients

  • 1 kg new potatoes peeled
  • 250 g butter keep the butter paper
  • Maldon salt

Instructions

  • Peel the potatoes, and cut off the tops and bottoms to give a flat surface.
  • Cut the butter into 1cm slices and lay in a frying pan. Lay the potatoes on top of the butter and season with salt.
  • Pour in enough water to so that it’s just below the surface of the potatoes. Open up the butter paper and lay on the potatoes.
  • Place the pan on the hob and bring to the boil. Simmer the potatoes gently in the butter and water.
  • Let the potatoes simmer hard in the butter until they are evenly and deeply browned on one side and then flip them. Season with more salt.
  • Once cooked through remove them from the heat and cover in a double layer of cling film. Leave the potatoes off the heat to rest in the butter for about an hour.
  • Finish by brushing the potatoes with a little of their own butter juice, then check if they need more salt.

Video

Categories
butter beans chorizo food tomato

chorizo and butter bean stew

Popped round a friend’s for dinner. It was supposed to be out for tapas – but it turns out that restaurant was closed. On a Saturday! Don’t worry they said, we have just the recipe. And this is it!

Originally this comes from a Waitrose magazine, but as recipes do they get twisted and transformed along the way until they are just the way you like it. Meaty chorizo gives it bags of flavour, tomatoes are sweet/sour and butter beans are soft and comforting.

It also keeps great in the fridge or freezer, scales up well for a crowd – it’s a keeper! For posterity, I asked for a copy and stashing it here on the blog so I have a copy always on hand. Thanks for the recipe!

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chorizo and butter bean stew

This tasty stew suits any time of year, but especially the tail end of summer when you're clinging on the last of the warmth.
Course Main Course
Cuisine Spanish
Keyword tapas
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Servings 4
Calories 369kcal

Ingredients

  • 250 g chorizo sliced
  • 1 onion finely chopped
  • 2 sticks celery finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic crushed
  • 1 courgette sliced
  • 150 ml dry white wine
  • 400 g tinned tomatoes
  • 1 tin butter beans drained

Instructions

  • Fry the chorizo in a large, non-stick frying pan until it releases its oil. Add the onion, celery and courgette and cook until softened. Add the garlic and fry for 30 seconds to spread the garlicky flavour around.
  • Turn up the heat and add the wine. Bubble away until there's a thick syrup at the bottom. Add tomatoes to the pan and reduce the heat, simmering for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally to break up the tomatoes, until the sauce has thickened.
  • Stir in the butter beans and simmer for a further 5 minutes. Check seasoning, then garnish with chopped flat leaf parsley and serve with a tomato salad, and crusty bread to mop up the juices.

Notes

Very easy to swap out the beans for any beans or pulses you have that need using up. Puy lentils or chickpeas would be great. This also serves well alongside many things like a jacket potato, rice or tortillas. Serve in smaller amounts with other dishes for a great tapas.
Categories
book review food

ranking the books of heston blumenthal

Which is Heston Blumenthal’s best book? Blumenthalophile that I am I own them all, so I thought I’d compile them all in one list. I’ve ranked them from least favourite to most favourite. He’s authored 7 distinct books spanning 20+ years (with a couple of compendiums, deluxe editions and best-ofs) with different themes and ideas.

Video version of this review here:

As a big fan of Heston Blumenthal I made a list of how I rank his books.

7. 📚 Heston’s Fantastical Feasts: the menus and themes are fun, but all of it is so out there you’re never likely to do it. It’s all very specific. My full review here.

Buy on Amazon

6. 📚 Family Food: written in 2002 and it is definitely a reined-in Heston. There’s lots of recipes and discussion but very little of it has the wizardry we associate with him, besides a few standouts like Herve This’s chocolate mousse.

Buy on Amazon

5. 📚 Is This a Cookbook?: it’s an adorable book (and nice to have one ‘normal’ size!) with beautiful David McKean illustrations, and lots of ruminations from Heston on how a recipe works. There’s also a whole chapter on cooking with cricket powder which is… different.

Buy on Amazon

4. 📚 The Fat Duck Cookbook: a proper labour of love, much like the restaurant. The first section is a history of the venue, the second detailed breakdowns of significant recipes, and the third a science of food. A very heavy read with small font and it weighs a ton! Read this to get inside his mind, but otherwise it’s a curio. My full review here.

Buy on Amazon

3. 📚 Historic Heston ever-fascinated with the history of recipes in the UK, this is a timeline of dishes that he has found with his methods to modernise them. You’re very unlikely to cook anything from it, but you understand a lot about how he cooks and how to adapt recipes. My full review is here.

Buy on Amazon

2. 📚 In Search of Perfection: from the TV series of the same name, this remains very enjoyable and readable where he recreates a classic dish from the ground up. The core concept was to keep the recipes achievable for the home cook so there’s lots to attempt if you’re up for a challenge. I also get the sensation he’s really enjoying himself.

Buy on Amazon

1. 📚 Heston Blumenthal at Home: strikes the balance right between recipes and food theory. Excellent photography, a real deep understanding of how a recipe works, and the feeling that these genuinely are things he enjoys cooking.

Buy on Amazon

Do you own one of these cookbooks? Which is Heston Blumenthal’s best book? Let me know in the comments!

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