Steak - Mark Schatzker [43]
The mixture bubbled for forty minutes, at which point Christophe added several ladles of fond blanc, a mild chicken stock that French chefs use so liberally I suspect a few of them wash their cars with it. Fond blanc itself takes hours to make, another reason it is best to cook complicated sauces in a well-stocked French kitchen like the one at the ADF, where gallons of fond blanc are simmering at all times. (Christophe says it is permissible to use water in place of fond blanc.) While the simmering continued, Christophe took the remaining third of beef trimmings and a second casserole pot, and repeated the entire process all over again. But this time, when the second casserole dish reached the stage where it was ready for the fond blanc, he poured in the liquid from the first pot, explaining, “This is how you get the concentrated taste.” He dipped a spoon into the sauce and handed it to me. The flavor of the onion, thyme, and garlic had vanished. I was tasting beefy nectar.
At long last, it was time to cook a steak. Christophe cut Metzger’s tenderloin into thick, round slices, laid each into a hot pan with olive oil and butter, and let them sizzle. Before they were fully cooked, Christophe pulled them off the heat, placed them on a plate, and poured the buttery pan juices over them. He now produced a third casserole pot—there are hundreds at the ADF—and in the bottom formed a nest of hay. Within it, he placed the clutch of steaks. To this he added the jus, pouring in the liquid until it reached one-third of the way up the steaks. Placing a final thatch of hay over the steaks, he put the lid on the casserole pot and placed it in a hot oven for ten minutes.
The dish was still a long way from being cooked. Out of the oven, the steaks remained in the casserole pot so they could become infused by hay vapors for another hour. At one point Christophe lifted the lid, and the room suddenly filled with the smell of baking cake. He smiled. “The aroma reminds everyone of their youth,” he said, “even people who’ve never visited a farm.” As aromas go, it was as attention-grabbing as the feedlot stench in Texas, but pleasurable instead of painful. It smelled as if a French grandmother was cooking a pecan tart in a wood-beamed hayloft. It smelled like the ventilation exhaust from a German hazelnut cake factory. It smelled as if teddy bears were toasting marsh-mallows roasted in honey and almonds over a crackling fire.
At this advanced stage in the cooking process, the sauce remained coarse and unformed, the culinary equivalent of crude oil. Christophe now poured the hay-infused jus from the casserole pot through a fine-mesh sieve into a smaller pot, which already contained an inch of the original jus. The pot went on the stove, and the liquids combined and condensed. On another burner, Christophe set a silver pan and tossed in a half pound of butter—the ADF goes through almost as much butter as fond blanc—which spread, bubbled, and turned brown, becoming a substance the French call beurre noisette. To this the now-condensed hay jus was added, synthesizing into a thick liquid as dark and sweet-smelling as melted chocolate. Hours after that first chunk of trimming had been removed from the tenderloin, the sauce was at last finished. Christophe removed the steaks from the low oven