I’ve been thinking quite a bit about locally grown food lately — not unusual for me by any means,  but my thoughts have just been more intensely focused.  So it shouldn’t be unusual for an article like “Butchers’ Banquet:  England’s Lincolnshire Wolds” published in the October 2011 issue of Saveur to have an impact on me.  I’m always looking for truly good recipes for traditional food, and even though I’m not British, I have solid connections.   In 1881 at the age of three, my great-grandfather sailed with his family from Newport, Wales to San Francisco hoping to find inexpensive land where his family might grow apples.  But that’s a story for another day.

This is more about the group of men mentioned in the article who have gotten together over years and years to enjoy a Sunday meal each week.  They know where the food has been grown, how it’s been grown, and have prepared it to showcase its quality.  Of course, it helps that they’re in the business.  I’d like to be invited to a table like that to hear the talk and understand more about what they know.  I’ll work on that from here in San Diego and maybe, just maybe, by the end of this year, I’ll know more about the more than 6,000 farms in our county and the farmers who tend them.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share these great Steak & Guinness pies with you.  My father-in-law loves Stilton and will jump at any excuse to tuck his napkin into his shirt and cozy up to a plate of hot food like this with a pint.  The recipe isn’t challenging, but does take some time, so plan ahead.  It’s worth it.

Steak & Guinness Pie Recipe

Filling Ingredients

¼ c. olive oil
1-1/4 lb. beef chuck, cut into 1″ cubes
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 large yellow onions, sliced
2 ribs celery, thickly sliced
2 small carrots, thickly sliced
2 T fresh rosemary, chopped
1 12-oz. bottle Guinness
1/4  cup flour
2 c. vegetable stock
2 tsp. mustard powder
1 bay leaf
1 T olive oil
10 oz. mushrooms, quartered
6 oz. English Stilton, crumbled
1 medium zucchini, sliced quartered
1 egg, lightly beaten

For the crust, use the dough recipe from my Cornish Pasties .

Directions

1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Season beef with salt and pepper, then brown in batches, removing to a bowl as it finishes.
3. Add the garlic, onions, celery, carrots, and rosemary to the skillet and saute until softened and just beginning to brown.
4. Pour in the Guinness and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 20 minutes.
5. Sprinkle the flour into the mixture and cook, stirring until mixed.
6. Add the browned beef to mixture along with any juices that have accumulated in the bowl, the stock, mustard, and bay leaf.  Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat and cook partially covered,  about 1½ hours.
7. Make the dough for the tops while the beef is cooking.  Wrap in plastic and chill until ready to use.
8. After the beef mixture is done, remove it from the heat and set it aside.
9. In another skillet, heat the 1 T of olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the mushrooms and zucchini and cook, stirring, until browned, then add to the beef mixture.
10. Add the Stilton to the mixture and stir in.  Correct seasoning.
11. Heat oven to 375°.
12. Divide beef mixture among four 6″ oven-proof bowls or pie pans able to hold up to 12 oz.
13. Roll the dough into a 14″ square and cut out four 6″ circles.  Press each circle gently down over the filling.
14. Brush the dough with the egg and with a pair of scissors, cut an “x” into the top of each.
15. Bake on a baking sheet until browned and bubbling, about 40 minutes.

Notes:

• This recipe was adapted from this one which accompanied the article linked above.
• I’ve made it a couple of times and although I have switched things up a bit each time, it’s just plain delicious.  Is there such a thing as gourmet pub food?
• The filling is very forgiving, but taking time to brown the meat properly without crowding it in the pan, and then allowing it to braise with the veggie mixture is key.
• You can make the beef mixture minus the Stilton a day ahead, covered in the fridge.  Reheat, add the Stilton, then place the dough on and bake.
• If you try the original recipe in the link, the purchased puff pastry is decent, but I loved the dough crust better.  It’s so easy to make — nothing fancy at all — give it a go!
• You’ll probably have dough and filling left over — I did each time I made it — so if you need to, you can probably squeak out six smaller pies.
• We enjoyed these pies with Bubble and Squeak.  Think mashed potatoes with veg and you’ll have it right.
• Now, for pork pie.  I have lots and lots of pork in my freezer from a local farmer.  Lots.

I had an urge to make paella — but not the more traditional kind made with rice — and now that I think of it, if rice isn’t in it, then it’s probably not called paella.  No, I’d seen a recipe featured in Saveur some time ago which used thin, short pieces of pasta resembling spaghetti broken to bits, and it’s taken me until recently to give it a go.  I haven’t made paella for years thinking that having a best friend who’s a pro at whipping out her four foot diameter authentic paella pan whenever anyone mentions “party” has kept me lazy.  I don’t have a paella pan, but can manage a batch in a large skillet on my stove instead of a wood fueled fire on the patio which could incite neighbors to call 911 because they think the house is on fire.

The intrigue of the pasta or fideos based paella is the cooking process.  It’s very similar to a rice-based recipe, but pasta absorbs the liquid more quickly, and there’s less a worry about whether or not to stir the rice you’re not supposed to stir so it can develop a nice crust.  That isn’t the case with the pasta version, but it’s a challenge to keep from stirring it when you’ve got an impetuous stirrer in residence.

A basic paella requires a good pan which is not so thick, heat that will be distributed evenly across the pan, a short-grained rice that will absorb liquid without making the rice gummy, and liquid.  The finished product should be moist, but unlike risotto, contain separate pieces of tender rice.  Since I was foregoing rice for the recipe I chose, and because the original recipe was relatively easy, I decided to make my own fish stock — because.

Picture me at the Asian market in front of the fish case scanning several varieties of fish heads.  Large fish heads.  Inexpensive fish heads –  all under $4/lb.  A perky young man behind the counter asks whether he can help me and I tell him while pointing to a white fish, “I’m making fish stock,” to which he responds pointing to the salmon, “It better for you.”  I know this, but also know it’s very oily.  Should I mention that no matter how good salmon is for me, I am not one of its biggest fans?  He continues, “You want me clean it up for you?”  And I say that I’m happy to do it myself, but he grins and says, “I do it better for you.  You too busy.”

I am so not busy and loving every second of it.  Any busyness in my life now is self-generated.

But he certainly was correct about doing it better than I could, because after I removed the brown paper wrapping at home, I had to admire an extremely clean,  perfectly sectioned salmon head.  What had I been thinking before?  Had I insisted on taking care of it myself, I would have had to wrestle with it without the correct type of knife, then smell like the village fish monger for my trouble.  A not very busy fish monger, but still.

I was still concerned about making broth with salmon so had to do some research before choosing a recipe.  Evidently, it’s a matter of opinion.

Have you ever made any kind of fish stock before?

If you aren’t in the mood to tackle that, there are other options, but if you’re a paella lover, try this version of Fideua for a change.  Or, if you’ve always wondered about paella but haven’t tried it, start with this.

Fideua:  Spanish Pasta with Clams, Mussels, and Shrimp

Ingredients for my version

1 lb. small clams
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1  lbs. shrimp, whole with shells on
3 medium tomatoes, seeded and chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 lg. leek, split, rinsed, and white and light green portion sliced
salt and pepper
8 cups fish stock (see below)
1 large pinch saffron threads
1 tsp. hot paprika
1 lb. fideos or spaghetti, roughly broken into 2” pieces
1 lb. green lip mussels, scrubbed and debearded

Directions

1. Clean the mussels and clams by  rinsing under cold water to rinse of any sand, and remove the beards from the mussels if still attached.  Rinse the shrimp as well.
2. In a very large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat.  Add the leeks and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.  Add the garlic and tomatoes and allow to cook 1 more minute, stirring occasionally.  Season with salt and pepp
3. While the vegetables are simmering, heat the stock until hot, remove from heat and stir in the saffron and paprika.  Allow to steep until ready to use.
4. Sprinkle the fideos over the vegetable mixture and toss until moistened.
5. Add the shrimp, mussels, and clams to the mix and evenly distribute over the other ingredients.
6. Pour the hot broth over, making sure the seafood is as submerged as possible, and allow to cook undisturbed until the fideos are al dente, the shrimp brightly colored, and the clams and mussels opened.
7. Serve.

Ingredients for salmon stock

1 salmon head, quartered, cleaned
1 small onion, quartered
2 lg. cloves garlic smashed and peeled
1 carrot, cut into chunks
1 bay leaf
sprigs of fresh thyme
sprinkle of whole peppercorns
6 c. water
1 c. dry white wine

Directions can be found here.

Recipe Notes:

• Was this the best “paella” I’ve had?  No — but I did enjoy the variety and quantity of seafood in it.  We’re big fans of shell fish and enjoy the broth created whenever we cook it.
• Outside of chopping a couple of the ingredients, this was an extremely easy dish to prepare, and it’s a show stopper.
• If you’re not interested in making your own fish stock, you can use bottled clam juice, but it will be much more pricey than the cost of a fish head.  You can also use vegetable stock, or water.  If you use water, some white wine added to the vegetables will add to the flavor.
• We successfully avoided stirring the dish as it cooked, and it’s completely against the rules evidently, but I also covered the pan partially with a baking sheet for part of the cooking time.  I was worried about ending up with soggy pasta and unopened clams, although in other recipes I’ve tried, 6 minutes is usually enough to steam open the clams.
• So what are the rules?  This article published in Fine Cooking discusses authentic paella and it’s short and sweet.
• Here’s another version of Fideua, or Spanish Pasta by Mark Bittman which includes scallops but uses a surprisingly low amount of liquid.

More Paella Recipes:

• Cast Iron Paella at Macheesmo
• Paella La Rambla at Kitchen Butterfly
• Fisherman’s Paella at gastronomy
• Seafood Paella at Wrightfood
• Paella Amongst Other Things at La Tartine Gourmande
• And this version at Food & Wine which is on my list to try next — and I won’t wait as long as I did this time to make it.  It includes chicken, Spanish chorizo, and sole.

It’s that time of year, isn’t it?  That rush-about-hustle-bustle-get-everything-done-on-time time of year, and it’s more that than it ever has been here.  A week ago, I was in bed recovering from knee surgery, and today, a week later, feeling pretty good about my physical therapy session today.  Christmas is in how many days?

Now that I think of it, we have few worries.  One of the perks of being an empty nester with three adult sons who aren’t married is having very little Christmas shopping to do.    We can actually think about strolling around this next weekend — maybe with one crutch in tow — enjoying ourselves, mulling over one choice for a present or another, taking advantage of the deals not available even a few weeks ago, and afterward treating ourselves to dinner somewhere with a crackling fire.  Yule Log on a flat screen would be more the reality around here, and I’d settle for that considering it’s supposed to rain this weekend.

On the other hand, I’ve been too leisurely about posting my second recipe for the Cookies We Love Challenge featuring sweets from Saveur’s “Smart Cookies:  Favorite Holiday Treats from Around the World.”

The first treat I made, Caramel Crumb Bars from New Zealand, disappeared fairly quickly, so they’ll be tough to top.  Because of my semi-ambulatory state, I settled for an easy to whip up recipe from Mexico next:  Galletas con Conchitos or Cookies with Sprinkles which could be made any time of the year, actually — especially if you are a busy person in desperate need of a tasty butter cookie, or someone with children who like to be involved in baking.

Mine were baked one evening, wrapped the next morning, and mailed to my son in San Francisco along with quite a few other holiday teeth rotting treats to share with his dorm buddies.  Or is it resident hall acquaintances?  No matter.  They won’t care if any of it is in one piece when it arrives, but I always ask.

Mexican Butter Cookies

1-1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
3/4 c. sugar
8 T unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract, preferably Mexican*
3 egg yolks
1 egg white, lightly beaten
multicolored sprinkles, for decorating

In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, and salt. In a larger bowl, beat sugar, butter, and vanilla until fluffy, then add egg yolks one at a time mixing well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients and mix well. Scoop a generous tablespoon of the dough from the bowl and roll  into a ball.  Transfer to a lined baking sheet and using the end of a wooden spoon,  poke a hole in center of each ball. Chill for 1 hour. While the dough is chilling, preheat oven to 300°. Brush each ring with egg white, then dip into sprinkles to coat. Return to baking sheets; bake for 15 minutes. Let cool.  Makes about two dozen galletas.

Notes:

• The directions above are mine.  I decided to cut to the chase and avoid the whole rolling into a log, then cutting, then rolling, then cutting.  The tablespoon works.
• What doesn’t work — at least for me — is the sprinkles.  I’ve never made cookies before where the sprinkles go on before they’re baked.  Interesting.  Clearly, the jimmies weren’t the best idea.
• I chilled my dough for the entire hour.  Maybe even longer.  Regardless, I had spreadage.  I hate that.  Can someone please put me out of my misery on this?  I know it’s the water content in the butter, isn’t it?  Anyway, the very deep hole I poked into each ball flattened out almost entirely.  Go figure.
• The low baking temperature is also interesting.  I used a non-convection oven for exactly 15 minutes and they didn’t look quite done — pale in color and very soft.  My husband said they were, mumbling through a mouthful of warm cookie.  Buttery cookie.  Try and stop with just one even though they’re not as cute as you’d like them to be.
• The Caramel Crumb Bars are still in the lead.

Don’t forget to stop by my holiday baking buddies  who are most likely on cookie No. 3 by now.   Courtney of Coco Cooks,  Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes, Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen, Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook, Judy of No Fear Entertaining, Michelle of Big Black Dogs, RJ of Flamingo Musings, Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench, and Tiffany of The Nesting Project.

While many others in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying the first snow of the season, I’m admiring from afar, surprised by our own low temperatures which have hovered near 40 on a few nights. It’s been enough to coerce me to turn on the heater and take the chill off the house, but not more than that, because it’s nice to have some sense of a change of seasons.

Our family has never decorated our home for Christmas until a week or so before the holiday, so the days immediately following Thanksgiving have always presented a time to consider the simplicity of the season. We won’t venture down to our favorite tree lot until a week or so before Christmas, and decorations will remain in their boxes until then. I’ve wondered whether to wait even longer this year since our youngest isn’t expected home for the semester break until the 19th.

Decisions, decisions.

In the meantime, I’m happy to have been invited again to participate in a holiday cookie fest of with a group of the loveliest people. Two years ago, we took on Gourmet and  Christmas cookies from 40 years of publication. Last year, it was Bon Appetit, and 12 cookie recipes in 12 days. This year, we’re choosing from Saveur’s collection of Christmas Cookies, and presenting one a week.

Each year, I’ve had some excuse for my lack of follow through on the task, whether it was an overwhelming home remodel, an adjustment to working life after three years of retirement, or in the case of this year, knee surgery with lots of physical therapy to follow.   We’ll see how it goes.

This year, our group is comprised of Courtney of Coco Cooks,  Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes, Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen, Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook, Judy of No Fear Entertaining, Michelle of Big Black Dogs, RJ of Flamingo Musings, Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench, and Tiffany of The Nesting Project.

Ready?

Caramel Crumb Bars

To see the recipe, please visit Saveur here.

You’ll need lots of softened butter for this recipe, so a plan to give them away after you’ve sampled them is definitely a good one.

The dough comes together quickly and is soft, reminding me a bit of pie dough.

It’s pressed into a small, rimmed baking sheet layered with parchment, greased, and floured. I always wonder if all of that is truly necessary when there’s so much butter in a recipe.

Sweetened, condensed milk is mixed with sugar, more butter, vanilla, and just a touch of corn syrup.

Take a minute or two, maybe three or four to watch the thick stream of milk drizzle over the cube of butter, pouring with one hand, and shooting with the other. Then, get back to business wondering just how this particular caramel recipe will come together since it’s so different from any you’ve made.

Spread the caramel onto the chilled dough, and because you can’t keep to a recipe the way it’s meant to be made even if your life depended on it, sprinkle a couple of hand fulls of raw pecan pieces over the caramel.

Then sprinkle a bit of the remaining dough crumbs over the top, while noticing the size of them and confirming that the idea of chilling to ease crumbling and produce smaller pieces would have been a great thing to do. Next time?

Into the oven it goes where the caramel browns quite a bit, and the crumbs not so much, taking longer than expected. The aroma is lovely, however.

Let them cool a bit, then wonder that if the caramel hardens, it may become difficult to section the bars and give in to getting that task done. Only one or two crumbly casualties quickly become samples forcing a cold cup of tea to spend time in the microwave to wash it all down. The crust is a bit like shortbread, then nuts add a pleasant crunch, and the caramel is chewy.   A pleasant mouthful, I think.

Decide whether to coerce your significant other to take them to work, or wonder just how well they’d hold up in the mail and send them to one of your sons. They’re not that sturdy, so the mail option isn’t a good one for this batch. They shouldn’t last long on the cookie platter, though.

Don’t forget to stop by my baking buddies to see what they’ve got coming from their ovens this holiday season!

Notes:

• The caramel is interesting.  It bubbles as caramel does, but not in the huge way it does when the sugar melts first, then the milk is added.  It thickens as you stir and becomes a bit floury looking or even dry.  The color doesn’t really change all that much, but the consistency is what makes it interesting.  I wanted to take it off the heat at the 5-6 minute mark instead of the 8-10 stated in the recipe.
• The directions state that these cookies need to bake for 25-30 minutes.  After checking at each of those points, I left mine in for 35 mostly to brown the crumb on the top.  I’m thinking that if the crumb had been smaller, 30 would have been fine.
• The crust is fairly crumbly, and although it holds up to cutting, expect some breakage.
• I’m glad I added the pecans and was wondering about some mini-chocolate chips.  Perhaps I have Snickers on the brain.

I love cooking with wine.  Although I do enjoy a dry white splashed into a pan of caramelized shallots for deglazing, or marsala stirred into a mixture of sauteed mushrooms and garlic before a bit of cream is added, I most enjoy meat or poultry braised slowly in red wine over the course of a Sunday afternoon.  Anticipation builds as a heavenly aroma fills the house making us all a bit anxious for dinner time to arrive to see whether the finished product lives up to its promise.

Sometimes, I’m a fairly hard sell.  It isn’t so much that the most recent recipe I’ve experimented with isn’t good;  they very nearly always are.  But think about it.  Once you’ve had an amazing version of something you truly enjoy, it’s challenging for anything else to replicate the wonder of that first bite.

Mention Coq au Vin and someone will ask about what the special occasion might be.  When you consider that any braise is done because the meat used is not an expensive cut, and needs to cook for a long time to make it tender, you know it isn’t necessarily a fancy dish.  In the case of Coq au Vin,  traditionally, the farmer’s old rooster became the dinner.  Bacon, mushrooms, onions, and a liberal quantity of red wine made for quite the send off for that old rooster, and a savory treat for the farmer after a hard day’s work.  All things considered, Coq au Vin is a one pot dish.

I’ve had my eye on a recipe for Coq au Vin I first saw in Saveur. The only reason I haven’t made it before now is that it required marinating the chicken overnight and sometimes my lack of planning gets the best of me.  That oversight hasn’t kept me from making Coq au Vin because I just choose a different version.  Unfortunately, that hasn’t solved the problem.  I’ve wondered about how the marinade might change the complexity of the flavors and whether this particular recipe might be the one to best all of the others.

Evidently, I’m not the only one. It just so happens that it’s the source of the next recipe I’d like to try for Coq au Vin.  Might it be the one?  I’d have to actually find a rooster that doesn’t have his feathers on to get started…and deal with his kidneys.

Coq au Vin

3 cups red wine
1 tsp. whole black peppercorns
3 cloves garlic (1 whole, 2 chopped)
2 ribs celery, thinly sliced
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
1  5–6-lb. chicken, cut into 10 pieces
3 tbsp. olive oil
8 sprigs flat-leaf parsley plus 1 tbsp.
chopped leaves
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
1/2 lb. slab bacon, cut into 2″-long slivers
3 tbsp. flour
2 cups Chicken Stock
2 shallots, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tbsp. butter
18 pearl onions, peeled
1/2 lb. button mushrooms, quartered

The directions can be found here.

Notes:

• I used a whole, pre-cut chicken and included all but the gizzard, liver, and heart in this recipe.  With respect to the bacon, I’ve never taken the time to find out where I can get slab bacon, so just use thick-cut bacon:  about 10 strips because you can never really have too much bacon, can you?
• I chopped all the garlic and added it to the marinade.  I’d like to say I did this purposefully, but that would not be the case.  In any event, it was all going into the pot, so I decided it wasn’t a grievous error.
• I don’t make my own chicken stock.  I consistently use “Better than Bouillon” bases for my cooking.  They cost more, but are worth it when you’re making something nice.
• I used a small package of red pearl onions.  To prepare them, drop them into softly boiling water and allow them to cook for a few minutes before pouring them into a strainer and dousing them with cold water until they’re cool.  A bowl of water filled with ice cubes works just fine.  To peel them,  slice off the root end and the covers slide right off.  This still takes patience, so don’t underestimate the time involved in this step unless you’re an Olympic pearl onion peeler. You might assign it to an unsuspecting person related to you who happens to live in your house.  Train them early is what I always say.
• If I’m going to cook with wine, I don’t use anything I wouldn’t drink.  It’s tempting to go with something less costly, but taste it and then you’ll know.  You might be surprised at how great a $10 bottle of wine is.  The chicken isn’t expensive, so splurge on the wine. I probably committed a faux pas by using a lovely Rioja Tempranillo from Espana.  When you live in California, the French wine selection isn’t always that great (or you’re like me and don’t really understand what is good and what isn’t), and the Spanish selection is constantly improving.  There’s no logic in that explanation beyond the parenthetical insertion, but I’m sticking with it.
• Leave the skin on.  Resist the urge to take it off.  You’ll have other opportunities to avoid it later.  For example, peel it off after you’ve plated your portion.  Or, if you make this ahead, and you can do that, after refrigerated, the excess fat is visible, and you can remove it before reheating it.
• This is a very good recipe.  Very.  If you’ve not made Coq au Vin, it’s a great place to begin.
• The three of us enjoyed this with roasted parsnips and had plenty left over for another meal.
• If you’d like to try Julia’s version, it can be found here.
• Or you can read about which version is better at Chowhound. That would be the throwdown between Julia and Molly.

Ready for the oven.

Ready to serve.

Done.

Mustard Rosemary Rubbed Prime Rib with Bordelaise Sauce

I’ve been going through the most recent of the more than 10,000 photos in my iPhoto library trying to rid my Mac of its burden.  Yes, I have an external hard drive and do believe there are actually media files backed up there, but I haven’t checked lately.  Instead, I’ve been going through old recipe shots and either deleting those less memorable, or flagging others as potentially postable sometime before the turn of the next century.

Going through them reminds me somewhat of going out for a brisk three or four mile walk and then coming home to indulge myself with some neglected baked morsel neither my husband or son was willing to eat, so therefore, the duty is relegated to me.  Minus a few hundred calories on the walk — plus about a thousand if I’m lucky stuffing that morsel in my mouth.  I shoot and upload photos faster than I can delete them.

So what is this really about you ask?

It’s about that demi-glace I made. You remember, right?  I froze all those cute little containers of it for future use.  Perhaps you have nothing more interesting in your life than to wonder, “What in hell will that woman do with all that demi-glace?”  Well, maybe not, but I am able to say that I have sampled two recipes with the demi-glace so far and have experimented with a third.

The results are interesting, and I’m still not sure if it’s because of the high brown I inadvertently achieved on the vegetables in the initial phases of the demi-glace production, or whether it’s the recipes I’ve chosen.  Regardless, I owe you a report of my progress thus far.

I began with Bordelaise Sauce to accompany a beef rib roast, and if I remember correctly, it was to celebrate Valentine’s Day with my mother who happens to have found the love of her life at age 71.  Evidently, it is never too late.

Both the recipe for the Bordelaise Sauce and Prime Rib recipes are from Saveur.  The only change I made to either recipe was to use prepared dijon instead of Colman’s dry mustard which I did not have on hand.  Because I was busy with other dinner preparations, my husband made the sauce.  He loves to stir things so I figured he was perfect for the job — especially since the mise en place for the recipe was complete.

Rub the beef at least 24 hours in advance.

We enjoyed our Prime Rib and Bordelaise Sauce with Potatoes au Gratin and Rapini and an Asparagus Salad with Tomato Viniagrette from Gordon Ramsay’s Three-Star Chef.  Thanks for your patience ahead of time on the recipes for those.  All in good time.  All in good time.

For the Prime Rib…

Carved and ready to serve

Our roast was about 5 lbs. with the ribs still attached.  I mixed 2 T prepared dijon with 1 T fresh rosemary, 1 T sea salt, and 1 tsp. coarsely cracked pepper and rubbed it over the top and sides of the beef.  It was wrapped tightly in a plastic bag and refrigerated about 30 hours.  Two hours before roasting time, I removed it from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature on my kitchen counter.  I used a rack inserted in a small roasting pan to set the beef roast on.  As with any recipe I choose when roasting a large piece of meat, I review general guidelines for internal temperatures and our preferred degree of doneness which is medium (my husband) to medium rare (myself).  We plan for about 20 minutes per pound and use either the thermometer that can be plugged into my oven or an instant read thermometer toward the end of the cooking time.

For the Bordelaise Sauce…

A wide-bottomed sauce pan will help with the reduction.

Reduce over medium heat...

Nearly completely evaporated

Combine shallots, thyme and bay leaf in a wide-bottomed sauce pan, pour in the wine and then reduce over medium heat until the wine is nearly completely evaporated.

Stir in the demi-glace

Toss the thyme and bay leaf and stir in the demi-glace.  Sauce the beef as desired when serving, and pass the remainder for those who would like more.

A very nice meal

Notes:

• This was a very heady combination of flavors.  The rosemary and mustard on the beef along with the rich sauce was interesting.  Others enjoyed it, but I felt it was a bit strong, and I’m a mustard lover.  Of course, I believe I also ended up with an end piece in the hustle and bustle of getting dinner on the table.
• If you’ve not tried roasting meat using the technique in this recipe where the oven is initially very hot and then turned down very low, I highly recommend it.  I’ve tried it many times, and we enjoy the texture it gives the exterior of the meat.  The interior is always moist.
• For the bordelaise, I used Markham Cabernet Sauvignon even though the sauce is French and originated in the Bordeaux region, meaning I should have used a bordeaux.  I’m just not that great at choosing French wine and when you live in California, it seems pointless to avoid the hundreds of labels I can choose from at a regular grocery store.  The Cab was a bit pricey, but it was a special occasion and I knew I’d have some of the bottle left to drink with my meal.  Generally, I choose a wine that I’d want to drink to use in a recipe like this, otherwise, the quality of the sauce will only be as good as that wine.
• If you aren’t one to try making your own demi-glace just to try this sauce, then this recipe can also be made using Demi-Glace Gold.  I’ve used it for years and enjoy the rich, but much more mild flavor than what my demi-glace renders.  It can be found at specialty stores or at Amazon.