Mastering the Art of French Cooking - "Paupiettes De Boeuf" (Braised Stuffed Beef Rolls)

Maybe I should start calling these blogs "Mastering the Art of French Cooking Mondays" because it seems like that is the day I have been making something out of my cookbook. Guess that is because I am off three Mondays a month from my housecleaning business and usually spend my Mondays in the kitchen baking or cooking.

I went camping this weekend and brought along "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and a stack of posted notes. Looked through the book and stuck a note on each recipe I want to try. I think I marked off over half of the recipes. :) This was one of the beef recipes that I thought sounded interesting. Decided to try it today.

It's a very long recipe, several different steps, but nothing too difficult. I think the hardest part for me was cutting the top round into cross-grain slices and then pounding them out so they could be stuffed. I think I made my slices a bit small. When I rolled the slices around the stuffing they didn't quite close when tied. But, other than that, everything else was pretty simple.

You mix veal and pork with egg, onion, garlic, thyme, allspice, pepper, salt and parsley. That is the stuffing that you roll up in your top round that you have sliced into 3" pieces and then whacked with a mallet into nice thin slices. After you roll the stuffing in the beef you tie two strings around the meat to hold the stuffing in.

Lightly brown the rolls in some olive oil in a oven-safe casserole pot. Take the meat out and then brown some onions and carrots in the same pot. Cook some flour in the veggies.  Pour in some white wine and beef stock, toss in an herb bouquet made with garlic, parsley, bay leaf, and thyme, put the meat back in the pot, and simmer in the oven in the covered pot for about 1 1/2 hours. Take it out, take out the meat, add some Dijon mustard and cream and you are pretty much done.

I thought the dish was delicious. The beef was melt in your mouth fork tender, the stuffing moist and flavorful. The sauce had a hint of the mustard flavor, but complimented the beef perfectly. My hubby didn't like this dish. Said he could taste the white wine (I didn't notice it) and he's not big on wine in his food. (Had this problem with a Bolognese I made too). In fact, his favorite part was the broiled tomatoes I served with this. I thought they were just okay, and he loved them. Oh well, can't please him all the time. :) I also served green peas, brown rice, and toasted french bread, along with this recipe. The green peas I cooked with butter, shallots and chicken stock (a recipe in the book). The tomatoes I drizzled olive oil on, salt and peppered them and then mixed some bread crumbs with Parmesan cheese and butter and sprinkled that over the tomatoes before putting them under the broiler.

The recipe for the Paupiettes De Boeuf is on pages 318 -321 of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", if you have the book. You can probably find some version of this recipe on line, or if all else fails, send me a comment and I will email you the recipe. With two and a half pages of instructions, I'd rather not type it all here. :}