Dipping into Roy Andries de Groot's In Search of the Perfect Meal again....and found another great recipe from the Troisgros brothers...

Sliced Sirloin Steak with Lemon and Capers for four...

the first time you taste juicy, rare and tender sections of beefsteak, served in a soup plate with a natural sauce au jus but distinctly flavoured with lemon juice and the acid of capers, it comes almost as a shock -- it is so completely different from any previous gastronomic experience. By the second or third bite, you begin to realize that it is an extraordinarily successful combination of flavour - the sauce bringing out and magnifying the juicy meatiness of the sirloin. And this is achieved without bearnaise, hollandaise, butter, cream, or flour. With the well-known soothing effect of lemon juice on the digestion, you could eat a couple of pounds of steak in this way and never feel the slightest sense of overfullness. You should prepare, to go with this, a nice mixture of light, seasonal, fresh vegetables, preferably poached or steamed, to be served around the meat as a colourful garniture jardiniere.

2 1/2 lbs Sirloin Steak, about 1 1/2 inches thick

1 tbls butter
1 tbls extra virgin olive oil
2 tbls chopped shallots
2 tbls fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 tbls red wine vinegar
1 1/3 cups beef stock
5 tbls demi-glace brown sauce (use any basic French recipe for this)
3 tbls capers, drained
Coarse sea salt to taste and fresh ground white pepper
small handful of fresh chopped parsley
1/4 cup chopped fresh tarragon

Preparation takes about 25 mins

Preheat oven to 175 F.

Cut all fat from steak then slice it into strips 1/2 inch thick and 3 ins long

Set heavy skillet over high heat and when it's hot, lubricate with a tbls each of butter and olive oil

Quickly drop in steak striks, batch by batch, moving them around and turning them over almost continuoustly, so that they brown and crust slightly on the outside but remain juicy, rare and tender inside. This will take SECONDS.

Keep steak warm on warm covered platter in low oven.

Lower heat under skillet, add lemon juice, vinegar, stock. Stir thoroughly and reduce it over two minutes.

Work in tablespoon by tablespoon, the demi-glace. Keep boiling hard to continue reducing for about another 5 minutes. Add capers, then season with salt and pepper and add parsley and tarragon.

Now put steak back into the sauce for l0 seconds. Serve instantly in very hot soup plates with about 1/4 inch of sauce in the bottom. Provide your guests with a soup spoon for the sauce.

Serve a red Burgundy or a noble California Cabernet Sauvignon from Sonoma - and drink a toast to the Burgundian skill of the brothers Troisgros!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=IVYAHOKTE5WGVQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=
/opinion/2007/10/18/do1803.xml

The Beeb stopped me cooking a squirrel

Journo Robin Page has funny piece in the Daily Telegraph about how the BBC first asked him to cook a squirrel on air and then nixed it.

Page was asked by the BBC to talk about the way North American grey squirrels are killing off native red squirrels, and what could be done about it. "The only answer is a sensible cull and, to make it "greener", grey squirrel should be welcomed on to our national diet, as casserole, fry-up and even barbecue. And in fact, posh country places are already putting roast squirrel on the menu.

But then someone at the BBC had a good idea; why not eat a grey squirrel on the programme? Page got it all set up only to get the red light. A BBC executive had ordered that "squirrels cannot be seen to lose their lives for an entertainment programme". "Which meant that three squirrels had already died for no reason."

"Cookery can't be entertainment? What about Ready Steady Cook, Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein, Jamie Oliver, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all? Every one chopping up, roasting and mincing an assortment of muscles and organs of beasts, birds and fishes for "entertainment".

What is the difference between eating a squirrel and scoffing a rabbit, a guinea fowl or a piece of prime roast beef? None whatsoever. And it is morally superior to eating soya, which is currently leading to whole eco-systems being wiped out as more land is "won" for cultivation from wild Brazilian forests. (emphasis is mine)..

The reason squirrel eating on The One Show was banned, against the wishes of the programme-makers, was the BBC's political correctness, and the ill-informed animal rights agenda that permeates the corporation. It is the same agenda that kept the countryside marches out of The Archers and that, I believe, swept David Bellamy off our screens when he, like me, had the temerity to join those marches.

FOXY LITTLE TART

It's wintry in the Finger Lakes, those slivers of pristine water spread like an open hand over the rolling countryof upper NewYork State. Along West Shore Road on Canandaigua Lake, the leaves lie curling on the ground before the first snow. I'm driving south along the lakeshore past the old family cottages that have made
Canandaigua an enduring summer resort -- Humphrey Bogart summered here as a child -- not only for Americans but for Torontonians, a mere three hours to the northwest.

My destination is Naples, home of the Great Grape Pie, where the grape vines close in on Main Street. Once, the grapes --big, fat, black Concords -- went to Widmer's Wines, which is spang in the middle of
the village, but then foxy wines went out of fashion and the Concords began to shrivel on the vines. That's when the cottage industry of the Naples Grape Pie, folk food of an irresistible order, came into
being.

At this point, someone who's read Jancis Robinson, the English wine
writer, will cry "Concord grapes? The wine Robinson likened to 'a
wet, cheap fur coat' ?"    more »