{"id":3653,"date":"2015-02-27T07:12:57","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T07:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=3653"},"modified":"2015-02-27T07:12:57","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T07:12:57","slug":"tournedos-au-poivre-cress-tomatoes-carrots-kale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=3653","title":{"rendered":"tournedos au poivre, cress, tomatoes, carrots, kale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tournedos_tomato_carrot_cress-kale\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Note to self: \u00a0You have permission to reproduce this meal any time you want to.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was once on fairly intimate terms with Julia child (I mean the books, not Julia herself, or even her TV show,\u00a0because\u00a0I lived in Providence and Newport, not Boston,\u00a0and I\u00a0didn’t watch much television of any kind,\u00a0and I certainly wasn’t about to do so in the 70s). \u00a0I did prize her first two books however, and I still have them, the spine of the older one lovingly repaired with white duct tape. \u00a0Among my\u00a0campaign medals I count the fact that I had\u00a0managed to bring to the table each of her three variations\u00a0on\u00a0the French preparation of tournedos<\/em>, some more than once.<\/p>\n

Okay, I confess that like everyone else in the country almost half a century back, I actually did watch\u00a0some of ‘The French Chef’. \u00a0The picture below is my favorite Julia image.<\/p>\n

\"julia_and_staff\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(I never get this kind of help)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Until this week I hadn’t really thought of tournedos\u00a0since the 1970s, and I probably would not have\u00a0found myself\u00a0there tonight, except for the fact that I\u00a0had almost tripped over a pair of five-ounce filets at the Millport Dairy stall earlier this week. \u00a0Everything I’ve purchased from John has been exceptionally good;\u00a0\u00a0I expected nothing less of his beef, and the two vacuum packages looked like they might have been made for me\/us.<\/p>\n

I had no mushrooms, no artichoke hearts, and no foie gras or truffles on hand, so I went with a slight modification of\u00a0Julia’s\u00a0basic steak au poivre<\/em>, which she\u00a0allows\u00a0as an alternative to the more elaborate preparations. \u00a0 It was delicious. \u00a0The steaks were of the classic size, about 2 1\/2 inches in diameter, and about an inch thick,. \u00a0They looked much more impressive once I had\u00a0encircled their extraordinary leaness in pork fat, but that took some doing. Just as I was about to perform the operation I noticed for the first time that the Niman Ranch fat I had chosen\u00a0to use was salt<\/em> pork, which wouldn’t do at all. \u00a0 I scurried about a bit and succeeded in boiling the pork strips, neutralizing most of the salt, but then\u00a0I found the segments weren’t\u00a0going to cooperate in encircling the filets. \u00a0I pulled out my jar\u00a0of toothpicks and, with the help of good kitchen twine, finally succeeded in taming\u00a0the now not-so-salty pork. \u00a0My tournedos<\/em> now looked like mines, but they were going to keep their shape and retain their juices.<\/p>\n

\"tournedos_in_process\"<\/a><\/p>\n