Tag Archives: recipe

Côte de Bœuf: ultimate French meat dish

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If one day there is a competition for The Ultimate French Meat Dish, I know the winner will be the Côte de Bœuf! And many French and international chefs seem to agree. When interviewed and asked about their favorite meat dish, or what meat they serve at a casual friends get-together, they often refer to this beautiful chunk of beef meat that comes with a bone. In English this piece of meat is called “a rib-eye on the bone” (http://www.jamieoliver.com/magazine/blogs.php?title=what-s-your-beef) or “a T-bone steak”, but I will stick to its French name.

We usually prepare the côte de bœuf once a month and serve it with salad and before the herbsa nice bottle of red. I am very bad at following any recipe (I prefer to invent them myself) and I am equally bad at writing them down (I never do that either) so if you have difficulties following the recipe I am trying to compose here, do not hesitate to email me should you have any questions.

1. Buy a nice-looking piece of meat, not too much of fat, but with a bone, and leave it at room temperature for 2-3 hours. The piece we buy usually weighs around 1kg, sometimes 1,2kg (the bone included). If you serve potatoes as a side dish, the côte de bœuf can serve four people. If you are two and cannot finish it all, think about eating it cold with mustard the next day…

2.  Start heating the oven (around 200C-225C). Prepare olive oil, peppers (usually black and white, but I use Iranian green, too, that I recently bought in Dubai) and Herbes de Provence (oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary, satureja and marjoram). We never add salt at this pherbes de provenceoint (as you keep reading, you will see why). Cover the côte de bœuf with pepper and herbs, and remember: the more, the merrier! Herbs are good for you!

3. Admire your beautiful côte de bœuf and smell the herbs. Have un apéritif, maybe a glass of rosé from the South of France? Make sure that you have opened the bottle of wine that you will serve for dinner (just don’t drink it yet!).

4. If you have more people coming over to eat, or if your côte de bœuf is particularly small, then you can serve potatoes with it. We find that a salad is enough and makes the dinner less heavy. However, should you want the potatoes, halve them and put them in the oven before the côte de bœuf assalad they take longer to be cooked. Place the potatoes in an oven bowl in the lower middle part of the oven so that while the côte de bœuf is being grilled, its extra fat runs on the potatoes.

If you skip the potatoes part, then start preparing the salad. We like it very simple: roquette, beetroot and spinach leaves, mixed with slices of tomatoes and onions.

5. Every cooking experience has un moment stratégique. Putting the côte de bœuf in the oven is one of those moments, because from now on you have to start watching your clock. Depending on the size and thickness of the chunk of meat, your oven, your taste, etc., the côte de bœuf should be in the oven for approximately 20 minutes, maximum 30 minutes. côte de bœuf goes to oven

Place the oven rack on the upper middle part of the oven, and put the côte de bœuf directly on the rack (the aluminium foil that you see in the photo is only to cover the bottom part of the oven from the fat!). Cook it for 10-15 minutes on each side. Depending on the greasiness of the meat and the general quality, you may have a lot of smoke coming out when you open the oven, so keep the kitchen windows and ventilation on!

6. Get the côte de bœuf our of the oven. For juiciness,  it is recommended to wrap the meat in aluminum foil for 15 minutes before serving it, but I rarely do it.. Maybe I do dinner is readysomething wrong, but to be honest, I don’t see the difference it is supposed to make, so I don’t do it. So if you like, you can do as we do, and bring your côte de bœuf to the table and cut it into thin slices in front of everyone.

It is only at this point that the salt is added: the type of salt that is sprinkled on the côte de bœuf is coarse sea salt. If you want to make your dinner even more perfect, buy the salt that comes from Guérande, located in the Southern part of Brittany where salt making goes back to the Iron Age (http://www.leguerandais.fr).

7. Serve the salad (and potatoes if you made them), not forgetting the wine. We had purchased a bottle of red from 2009, Château la Sauvageonne, Cuvée Pica Broca, Languplateedoc Roussillon, Coteaux-du-Languedoc AOC (http://www.1907.fr/nos-domaines/domaine-la-sauvageonne/domaine-la-sauvageonne-pica-broca-terrasses-du-larzac-rouge.html).  This time it was not a bottle of independent winemakers, but one of Gérard Bertrand, a big name in the French and European wine merchant business (http://www.gerard-bertrand.com).

I hope you enjoy this very-easy-to-make meat dish as much as I do, and Bon Appétit!

Cooking class in Luang Prabang

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My first contact to Laotian food took place in Paris many years ago, at a restaurant called Rouammit in the 13th arrondissement. The same owners nowadays have three restaurants on the same street and since they opened Lao Lane Xang 2, we have been going to this one (http://www.viamichelin.com/web/Restaurant/Paris_13-75013-Lao_Lane_Xang_2-233365-41102).  We usually go there at least once a month and in my opinion it is one of the best restaurants in Paris, and I am not only talking about the Asian food category. Needless to say, I was excited to take a cooking class in Luang Prabang to learn more about the culinary culture in Laos. A country that has exported such an excellent restaurant to Paris must have a lot to offer, I figured! IMG_1449

We chose to have our first Luang Prabang lunch at Tamarind, a restaurant our friend who knows what good food means had recommended to us (http://www.tamarindlaos.com/). The lunch was so tasty that I had no more hesitations about where to do my cooking class, so I booked myself into a one-day cooking class for the next Saturday (classes fill up fast, so book in advance by email!).

Just before 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning everyone met at Tamarind, from where we were taken to a market to learn about the local ingredients. From the market we moved to a beautiful, green setting a bit outside the town, where the culinary secrets were about to be revealed to us.

We started preparing Jeow Mak Keua (eggplant dip). The fact that the ingredients (eggIMG_1472plant, onion, garlic and chillies) were grilled on an open fire gave the dip a smoky taste, and the peeling easier. (The moist should come out while the eggplant is being grilled, so don’t forget to puncture it beforehand!) After peeling these grilled ingredients I pounded them together with coriander, salt and fish sauce in a mortar (a stone bowl). When the paste became soft, our breakfast was ready: apparently Laotians like to eat sticky rice with this dip! So, the next time you fancy a break from your daily croissant or cereal, you know what to do… and you may even not need coffee to wake you up afterward!

The next dish we prepared is called Mok Pa (fish steamed in banana leave). In Cambodia it is called amok, and I have seen tIMG_1463his dish (with different name variations) in almost all Southeast Asian restaurants I have been to.

In a mortar I pounded 1 teaspoon of sticky rice powder, 3 shallots, 1 spring onion, 1 kaffir leave, 2 chillies, 5 thin slices of lemongrass, a bunch of dill and basil, plus a pinch of salt. A generous amount of fish sauce helped the pounding. The next step was to place banana leaves on a fire for few seconds (it makes them softer and more flexible to work with). I then cut the fish into rather large chunks and mixed them with the paste. Lastly, I placed the fish chunks on the banana leaves and folded and tied the leaves (use toothpick to close your banana leaf packages). These packages were then steamed. The next time my father says he has caught too much fish and doesn’t know what to do with the quantity, I tell him to surprise my mother with Mok Pa.

One of the highlights of our lunch at Tamarind a few days earlier had been Oua Si Khai (stuffed lemongrass) so I was pleased to hear it was part of our cooking class program. AIMG_1460s with the previous dish, we started with the mortar and pestle: pound 2 cloves of chopped garlic, 4-5 chopped spring onions, coriander to your taste, 2 kaffir leaves and salt (apparently the blender won’t release the flavors as well as the mortar and pestle). I chose to stuff my lemongrass with chicken and added the minced chicken meat to the paste, but only the imagination is your limit (try fish, shrimps, beef, tofu, vegetables, etc).

Before I could stuff the lemongrass with the chicken paste, I had the most difficult task to accomplish: cut the lemongrass! Actually I will copy paste the instructions from Tamarind, Restaurant & Cooking School, Exploring Lao Cuisine leaflet we were given in the end of our class, as tIMG_1476he cutting technique is quite challenging. “Using a sharp knife, and starting about 1cm from the base of the lemongrass, make a cut right through the stalk for about 4-5 cm, ensuring that both ends of the stalk remain intact, as these ends hold the filling in place. Rotate the lemongrass stalk a quarter turn and repeat. This will give a central hole or cage to hold the filling.”

I managed the cutting part quite ok and after one missed attempt, the chicken paste entered the lemongrass rather neatly. Before I could fry my oua si khai, I dipped them in beaten egg. I asked the chef why we cannot add the eggIMG_1481 directly to the chicken paste, but he said the stuffing part will become very slippery (maybe I will try it anyhow one day).

I would definitely like to prepare stuffed lemongrass in Paris, too, but my only concern is where to find such large lemongrass?

While our stuffed lemongrasses were left to cook in the frying oil, we moved onto the last dish: laap. I cannot over emphasize my love for laap (sometimes also written larb) –it is one of my favorite dishes in the entire world. This minced meat (or fish) salad, a national dish of Laos, has several variations, but one of the most common variation comes with beef. We followed the tradition and started putting ingredients together in a bowl.

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First we put together everything that you can see on the left-side board (minced beef meat, sticky rice powder, chilli powder, salt and fish sauce) and cooked it on a frying pan during few minutes. Secondly and separately, we finely chopped and mixed garlic, shallot, lemongrass, galangal (LaoIMG_1480tian ginger), chillies, (Chinese) long bean, mint, saw tooth, coriander, banana flower and spring onion (the right-hand board). In the end I added beansprouts and lime juice. For the adventurous ones, there was beef bile duct juice to make it more Laotian. In the end I only had to mix the ingredients of these two bowls, place the laap on salad leaves, and voila, my very first laap was ready!

It was around 2 o’clock and we had made the eggplant dip and three main dishes. It was time to sit down at the table and enjoy the results of this pleasant day. I liked the crispiness of the chicken-stuffed lemongrass and I IMG_1482found the laap very good and subtle, and various herbs made it taste very fresh and aromatic. Banana leaf package was intact and I was pleased with my folding skills. It was maybe the least tasty dish, but at the same time it compensated for the tanginess of the laap. And when I felt like something more pungent, I had the eggplant dip.

Overall, the day was excellent. Our chef was professional, explained with patience and took time to show cutting techniques in person when needed. Tamarind also organizes an evening course where you do one dish less and there is no market visit, but otherwise it is a convenient choice for those limited with time.