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. :}

Mastering the Art of French Cooking - "Gnocchi Gratines au Fromage"

Or "Gnocchi Baked with Cheese". This is only my second recipe out of MtAoFC. I have never eaten gnocchi, let alone made them. But, a friend of mine tweeted last week about a gnocchi dish (her's was different but sounded delicious!) and I decided to flip through my copy of MtAoFC and see if there was a recipe in there for gnocchi, and sure enough, there was. There were several in fact. After reading through them, I decided on the "Gnocchi Gratines au Fromage". Wish making it had been as easy as typing this. While none of the steps were really difficult, there were many steps to the final presentation. You have to make two other recipes before you can make the final one. Let me elaborate.

In order to make Gnocchi baked with cheese, you must first make "Gnocchi De Pommes De Terre", which is Potato Gnocchi. However, in order to make the potato gnocchi, you must first make "Pate A Choux", which is Cream Puff Paste. Did I mention there were a lot of steps to this recipe. Just checking. :)

Here is the recipe for "Pate a Choux"...     

For about 2 cups
A 1 1/2 quart, heavy-bottomed saucepan
1 cup water
3 ounces (6 Tbls.) butter, cut into pieces
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
pinch of nutmeg
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (scooped and leveled)
4 large eggs

Bring water to boil with the butter and seasonings and boil slowly until the butter has melted. Meanwhile measure out the flour.
Remove from heat and immediately pour in all the flour at once. Beat vigourously with a wooden spatula or spoon for several seconds to blend thoroughly. Then beat over moderately high heat for 1 to 2 minutes until mixture leaves the sides of the pan and the spoon, forms a mass, and begins to film the bottom of the pan.
Remove saucepan from heat and make a well in the center of the paste with your spoon. Immediately break an egg into the center of the well. Beat it into the paste for several seconds until it has absorbed. Continue with the rest of the eggs, beating them in one by one. The thrid and fourth eggs will be absorbed more slowly. Beat for a moment more to be sure all is well blended and smooth.

Okay, so now you have your cream puff paste made. In the meantime you need to be working on getting the potato portion of the recipe made. Here is the  recipe for Gnocchi De Pommes De Terre...

These make a good luncheon dish, or may be used as a starchy vegetable to accompany a roast.
     For about 12 gnocchi, 3 by 11/2 inches when cooked

3 to 4 meduim-sized baking potatoes
1 cup warm pate a choux (see above recipe)
1/3 cup grated Swiss, or Swiss and Parmesan, cheese
A 12" skillet of simmering salted water

Peel and quarter the potatoes. Boil in salted water until tender. Drain and put through a ricer. You should have 2 cups.
Dry out the potatoes by stirring them in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over moderate heat for a minute or two until they film the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat.
Beat the pate a choux and the cheese into the potatoes. Correct seasoning.
Take the mixture by dessert-spoonfuls and roll it with the palms of your hands on a lightly floured board to form cylinders about 21/2 inches long and 1 inch in diameter.
Slip the gnocchi into the simmering water and poach, uncovered, for 15 to 20 minutes. Water should remain almost but not quite at the simmer throughout the cooking. If it boils, the gnocchi may disintegrate. When they have swelled almost double, and roll over easily in the water, they are done. Drain on a rack or a towel. 

There was a small note between recipes that read...
"Additions to the Potato Gnocchi Paste -
     Any of the following may be mixed into the gnocchi paste along with the cheese, and are especially good if your gnocchi are to be served as a main course.
     3 to 4 TB minced fresh herbs, such as chives & parsley.
     1/4 to 1/2 cup minced cooked ham or bacon
     1/4 to 1/2 cup sauteed diced mushrooms or chicken livers.

I am serving mine for dinner tonight so I chose to add some cooked bacon to the paste.

Once you have made your pate a choux, and your potato gnocchi, there were a couple of ways to finish off the dish. One was with a cheese sauce which meant more pots and more cooking to create the sauce you would pour over the gnocchi before baking. I decided to pass on that recipe. The final recipe, the Gnocchi Gratines au Fromage, was simple and is as follows...
Gnocchi Gratines au Fromage (Gnocchi Baked with Cheese) 
The preceding gnocchi
1/2 cup grated Swiss or Parmesan cheese
2 TBL. butter cut into peasized dots

Arrange the drained gnocchi in a shallow, buttered, baking dish. Spread the cheese over them and dot with butter. Set aside uncovered.
Ten minutes before serving time, reheat and brown them slowly under a moderately hot broiler.

This is the finished product. I made a small dish to try. It was delicious! Creamy, smooth, mild flavors.This definitely falls into the category of comfort food. I used both Swiss and Parmesan cheese and the blend was perfect. I could just taste the potatoes and the bacon was a nice background taste in addition to the cheese. I am going to serve these with some steamed broccoli (a favorite in my house) and some crusty french bread rolls.  The only other note I will add, if you don't like to wash dishes, don't make this recipe. Here is what my kitchen looked like when I finished. :) In all fairness a couple of those items were from baking Cottage Cheese Pufflets, but most of what you see came from making the Gnocchi baked with Cheese. I wouldn't make this every week, but, in my opinion, it was worth the mess. 

Mastering the art of French Cooking - Recipe One

I guess I am late jumping on the bandwagon. I still haven't seen the movie,but I decided to start a journey into french cooking.  I probably never would have, had it not been for Susan and the 4 recipes she has posted on her blog. The last one, this one, did it for me and I decided I had to go and get the cookbook and give it a go. Tonight I decided to try "Poulet en Cocotte Bonne Femme", or "Casserole-roasted Chicken with Bacon, Onions, and Potatoes". Mine also had steamed broccoli though Julia suggests serving broiled tomatoes for the color. I didn't have any tomatoes so I decided on broccoli, for the color.  :)

There were several steps for this recipe, but none of them were difficult. Besides the herbs, there were only 4 other ingredients. Chicken, small white onions, bacon and potatoes. (Not counting the broccoli because it wasn't in the recipe!) You fry up the bacon, then brown the chicken in the same pot you cooked the bacon in. Boil the onions, bring potatoes to a boil then drain them and add them to the pot.Put the chicken back in the pot, add the onions to the pot, put some herbs in, cover the whole pot with a lid and bake it in the oven for about an hour and a half, or less. Pretty simple stuff, at least for me.

The aroma of this dish baking was incredible. My husband came into the house and commented that something smelled really good. I told him it was a french dish, and he looked a bit apprehensive, but he's the kind of guy who will at least try anything I put on the table. He may suggest I never put it on the table again, but he will at least try it. Good man.

The only thing I did different, besides add broccoli, was the last 5 minutes of baking I cranked the heat up to 375 degrees, took the lid off and took the foil off the chicken and let it bake like that. I honestly don't think it did much, but that's what I did.

The chicken was moist, tender, fall off the bone delicious. The potatoes were tender and full of flavor from the bacon and onions. I had my doubts about the potatoes because you don't cook them before adding them to the pot. You just bring the water to a boil and drain them, roll them around in some hot butter and push them to the side of the pot to make room for the chicken. But, they turned out fabulous. Even the pearl onions were delicious. My husband's comment, after pushing away from the table, fat and sassy, was "That was really good, Babe, but I don't know how french it was". Men! Gotta' love 'em!

If you would like to try this dish yourself, Susan has it posted on her blog. I would post it here too, but since she already has it up on her blog I am taking the easy way out and just linking to it here. :)