Thomas Keller’s Beef Stroganoff

Thomas Keller’s Beef StroganoffIdidit!Iactuallydi

d it – made a double recipe of Thomas Keller’s Beef Stroganoff recipe. Lord, Ihope I never have to do it again. This was our birthday boy’s request for lastweekend. My husband thinks he’s going to ask for it again. (Please, please no.)

It’s a two-day affair. For the complete recipe, please check out these links onanother blog that has the whole recipe from Keller’s Ad Hoc cookbook. Basically

you make a braise by reducing wine with a ton of vegetables until syrupy.Thenaddmoreofthesa

me fresh vegetables, cover it with cheesecloth to make a “nest” to hold yourbrowned pieces of meat, add beef broth and then top with a parchment paper hat

(cover) and braise for 2 hours.Youseparatethemeat

from the vegetable wine broth in this cheesecloth nest because Keller doesn’twant any little bits of onion, leeks or carrots soiling his meat. Ha!!

So that was done on Saturday. Then on Sunday, the day of serving, you make themushroom cream sauce (6 cups of heavy cream, butter and crème fraiche!), sautéthe mushrooms (4.5 lbs. total), cook the fresh pappardella, cut the meat intocubes, warm and caramelize the presentation side of the meat, toss the noodleswith the sauce, add more butter, fold in the sliced mushrooms, put it all togetherand top with chopped parsley. Whew!!

Bianca helping me – sliced 2 lbs. of cremini mushrooms

With help on both days, you’re talking about 9 hours worth of work.

There had to be a lot of LOVE here to get through all of this.

How was it?

It was good – but way too rich for me. Since the recipe doesn’t state how many itserves and we had 7 people, I doubled it. We served 7 plus 1 second serving andthen leftovers to feed 5 more people. But you know, if you’re going to go throughthat much work, you might as well make extra for leftovers.

The birthday boy was happy. He called the next day to comment on how deeplyflavored each cube of meat was. (It damn well better have been.) Perhaps theparchment lid is a great idea because if you use the Le Creuset lid, that causesmoisture to form therefore dropping water onto your meat. Not good.

Making one boy happy was my aim!