I'm not sure how we started this low-key New Year's Eve tradition, but not being the party types, Victor and I are headed over to my parents' for dinner and some Trivial Pursuit. We're making dinner, actually, a london broil that my dad loves.
Dad's London Broil and Bordelaise Sauce
First get your appropriate hunk of meat...I think I have top sirloin tonight; I know I have used flank steak in the past. Put the meat in a ziplock bag and marinate it overnight in cheap French salad dressing. Really, get a bottle of the generic orange stuff, the kind that is nothing but oil, high fructose corn syrup, and red dye #2.* The sugar will carmelize as the meat cooks, giving the outside a nice crispiness.
I can't take credit for knowing this. Victor picked it up in a restaurant where he worked. Speaking of Victor, this is a meat best cooked on the grill, so he'll be doing that tonight. Frankly, even if it is "unseasonably warm," 40 degrees is a temperature at which I cook inside.
For the sauce:
Finely chop a shallot (As fine as you can...the sucker I chopped today was stronger than an onion, and I couldn't see very well through the tears. I'm lucky I didn't finely chop my thumb.) and saute in a little olive oil. Oh, do this in a saucepan...it is a sauce, after all.
Add two cans of beef broth and about a can's worth of red wine. Victor reminded me last night, as we stood in the wine store, that your sauce is only as good as the wine you use. That may well be, but I'm not wasting a $20 bottle of wine in a sauce. I used a $5 burgundy.
Add a couple of bay leaves and a few sprigs of thyme.
Simmer until the liquid is reduced. This is the part I hate, because it requires patience. Stir and taste periodically, you want the liquid to be hearty and beefy, but with the wine flavor. I ended up adding another few spashes of wine, because a cheap burgundy is apparently not quite so robust...after a good half an hour the sauce still tasted like beef soup.
In the end, I think I reduced the liquid to about half.
To give yourself something to do while the liquid reduces, make a roux with butter (about 2 T) and flour. You can just set it aside if it's done well before the reduction, timing is, thankfully, not of the essence. If it were, of course, I would not be doing this.
When the liquid is finally reduced sufficiently, take out the bay leaves and what's left of the thyme (probably just woody stems) and stir in the roux. (I also removed the bigger hunks of shallot, because I did such a lousy job of fine chopping.)
Stir in 8 oz. of sliced mushrooms, and when they are warm, serve. Because my father is anti-mushroom, I made the sauce up through the roux point, and tonight I'll reheat his separately, adding the mushrooms to ours.
This actually makes a heck of a lot of sauce (4 cups before adding the mushrooms), but we are not an "artfully drizzle a fine line of sauce over the meat" family. We are a "Gimme another piece of bread so I can sop up this up" family.
This dinner is obviously not part of the detox plan. I gave up...getting back on the health food wagon will be a New Year's thing, like getting back to the gym. (The owner e-mailed me today; the 5:30 a.m. hours resume on Monday. They always say January is crowded at gyms, but not, I bet, at 5:30.)
*Yes, red dye #2 is the one that went of the market in 1976 (in the U.S., anyway.) And red dye #3 was pulled in I think the '80's. But that orange color doesn't come from nature, and I was just seeing if you were paying attention.
Speaking of paying attention, I wasn't, so I didn't get anything submitted this time. Others are more on the ball, though, and the Carnival of Recipes #20 is up today.
Posted by Nic at December 31, 2004 03:42 PM