Recipes

4 Responses to Recipes

1. Sandra says:

   November 11, 2011 at 9:53 pm

   I have gotten a chateaubriand steak cut at the farmer’s market a few times and LOVE the cut. We recently received a 1/2 share of beef and I requested the chateaubriand steak cut, and received a cut labeled “whole tenderloin” that are cheap scale weighed at 3#. While the chateuabriand is from the tenderloin, what I received is NOT the chateaubriand cut, or is it? The farmer’s market vendor would sell me two 1#ish steaks. How should I cut the whole tenderloin and any recommendations for cooking?

   Thank you!

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   • Portland Meat Collective says:

     November 14, 2011 at 6:08 am

     Hi Sandra,

     Sorry to just be getting back to you now! It’s been a crazy couple of days of meat classes.

     I’ve had some run-ins with the elusive “Chateaubriand” cut (both in butcher shops in the states and abroad, and also in books, but I have to say that “Chateaubriand” is not a cut of meat I often see at meat counters these days. After receiving your question, I did some research, flipping through my fairly extensive library of meat books, and was interested to find that all books written after 1975, or thereabouts, pay little to no attention to “Chateaubriand” as a cut or as a recipe, whereas books published before then spend a good deal of time attempting to explain the term. “Attempting” being the key word. I also can say with quite a lot of confidence that “Chateaubriand” is not a cut that most small butcher shops in Portland typically sell. That said, here’s my understanding and paraphrase, of the complicated nature of Chateaubriand–but someone correct me, please, if I’m wrong.

     Traditionally, filet mignon and chateubriand are center-cut fillet steaks that come from the short loin, which includes the tenderloin, no? Though in England I think maybe there’s the sirloin and the filet undercut or some such terms. Anyway. This is one of the more tender portion of a beef carcass. The short loin lies between the rib and the pin bone portion of the sirloin. It sits in the middle of the back and just kind of lazily hangs out while the rest of the muscles on the cow or steer work a lot harder. There are other cuts that come from this area: porterhouse, t-bone, new york steak, filet mignon, etc. But I’ve also discovered that “chateaubriand” is less of a cut and more of a recipe. Butchers have, historically, (and somewhat dishonestly) used that term to describe many parts of the short loin and so it is a term often used to describe many cuts of meat from the same area of the animal. Upon further research, I discovered that a Chateaubriand can sometimes be a thick portion of boneless top sirloin, but sometimes, at least in years past, it has been used to describe a cut from the sirloin tip. If you look Chateaubriand up in “Larousse Gastronomique” it states that Chateaubriand is “a method of preparing a beef filet,” and calls for a thick slice from the beef tenderloin. From my understanding, often the beef tenderloin is sold as the “filet” or “filet mignon” in America, even though in France, filet mignon should just come from the small tip of the tenderloin. So, I think, maybe, traditionally, everyone has thought that Chateaubriand should come from the short part of the tenderloin……but I’m muddling my way through this a bit.

     For some reason, I can’t find my copy of Kari Underly’s new book: Art of Beef Cutting, which, I have a feeling, would help us get to the bottom of this.

     Meanwhile, you should consider asking your farmer where he gets his meat processed, then call them up and ask them how they define Chateaubriand. You may find that they have a broader, rather than a more specific, definition, than you thought.

     I wonder if the Chateaubriand that you received–the one you loved–was not the small end of the tenderloin? The cut that you received labeled “whole tenderloin”: did it look like a whole tenderloin? Or did it look like steaks? Or? My guess is that you received something that could pass as a Chateaubriand, but was maybe from the larger part of the tenderloin–which should be fairly satisfying as well–or maybe from above the tenderloin altogether. It likely comes from the general area that a Chateaubriand should come from, but isn’t the exact cut you got the first few times.

     In other words, Chateaubriand is a floating term so far as I can tell, unless you pin your processor down and can get them to define the good Chateaubriands you’ve had and the bad ones. Hope this helps. I welcome knowledge from others more knowledgeable than I on this topic as I’m still learning my way through the world of beef.

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2. Kevin Tippett says:

   July 1, 2011 at 4:52 pm

   I enjoy cooking, and often enough get compliments to the point where I feign modesty while the internal voice is doing cartwheels. There are some things I like (eating the results) and some things I don’t like (like feeding the results to my dog, who tells me in her canine fashion, “I’m eating this as a favor”). One of the arenas that I’m not good at, however, is pastry. With pastry you have to be pretty much exact. Too much of one ingredient or not enough of another can make a heavy flatbread out of what was intended as a flaky pie crust.

   Not so much with cooking the entrée. From one instance to another the ingredients, proportions, preparation and even the sequence can change to suit my taste of the moment, and that moment’s preference for texture.

   For example:

   The pig charcuterie class I took was headed up by Camas Davis and David Padberg, and during the course David mentioned a couple of times braising in milk. It sounded good to me. One of the cuts I took home was a lovely coppa, a piece meant for long, slow cooking.

   I cast about online and through several of my cookbooks, and as a result I cranked up the heat under my Dutch oven, melted some butter, and browned the coppa. Next I poured in several cups of whole milk, tossed in a few smashed cloves of garlic, and then roasted it all, covered, in a 250-degree oven for something like 3 hours, maybe more.

   My wife thought I was a genius (which the internal voice affirmed).

   The next time I used some roasted garlic butter I had stashed in the back of the freezer, used ½ whole milk and ½ buttermilk, a healthy pinch of smoked salt & a long grind of black pepper, and four decent strips of lemon zest. One thing that David had mentioned was that when braising with milk, the mess it made – glorious curds. After the session in the oven I took the meat out, scraped the clinging goo back into the pot, and then used an immersion blender to smooth it out. Magnificent. Or so said my wife and the voice within my skull. I even gave a taste to my dog, Nelly, who finally acknowledged that maybe opposable thumbs can be a good thing.

   So here’s my recipe, as it were:

   • A nice piece of pork such as coppa, with all of the associated collagen and fat necessary (caution: lean, tender cuts of meat will come out tougher when braised)
   • Enough milk to almost cover the pork (and at least think about using some buttermilk)
   • Smashed garlic. Can you use too much? Maybe. Maybe not.
   • Lemon zest
   • Salt
   • Pepper

   Melt the butter. Brown the pork. Add the milk, smashed garlic, zest, salt & pepper. Slow roast for 3 hours or there-abouts. Poke at the meat with a fork, and if you’re happy with it, remove the pot from the oven. If you want, use an immersion blender to de-curdify the resulting liquid.

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   • Portland Meat Collective says:

     July 5, 2011 at 5:51 pm

     Excellent! That’s one of my favorite things to do with pork shoulder/coppa. I also like to add a little fresh fennel to the equation. So I’ll sautee a little garlic, chopped fennel root, chopped onions in butter and olive oil, then remove that, brown the meat, add vegetables back in, add milk, and then braise. I usually blend/puree the sauce afterwards, just to make it look more appetizing, though it tastes great without doing so!

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