Food You Can Eat: Chateaubriand

Chateaubriand is a style of cooking a center cut of tenderloin/filet mignon and can be served with a Béarnaise sauce. It’s also often made with a red wine sauce but, if you can believe it, that’s even more complicated. A Béarnaise sauce is a sister to hollandaise, which you’ve had if you’re ever had/made eggs Benedict. 

This is the first Julia Child recipe I ever made. Why start slow when you can just dive right into the deep end of the pool? If you can’t swim, well, you’ll figure it out or die in the attempt. It came out very well and this was many years ago. It was. So. Laborious. And. Time-Consuming. Looking back on it I was like the sad Amy Adams character in “Julie & Julia”. I will have more to say about this at the end.

Julia Child, when she learned this at the Cordon Bleu in Paris in the 1950s, may have learned how to butcher a cow while she was at it. In fact, I’m almost sure of it. Time went on and I discovered more accessible ways to do this. I’m planning on making this for New Year’s Eve since it will be just the two of us, plus The Loyal Beast, but you can somewhat easily imagine how you can make more to feed a larger bunch. This might be a little confusing but I’ll do my best. This recipe features three guest appearances.

AN IMPORTANT CAVEAT: You will be using many pots and pans and dishes if you also make the sides, so make sure you read the whole recipe thoroughly, preferably more than once, and confirm you’ll have everything you need. Now imagine making this for 10. But I’ve done it, and so can you.

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For the beef:

1 1/2 lb. good center-cut beef tenderloin. 

1 or 2 tbsp. olive oil

Coarse salt

Ground pepper

A: What would Julia do?

When she and Jacques Pépin (surprise!) collaborated in the 1990s they did this:

Wrap the tenderloin in a towel and stand it upright. Tie the towel around the “neck”, lay it down again, and pound it on top with a mallet so it’s two inches thick. This thickness is important, as you’ll see. Remove the towel and rub the flattened tenderloin with the olive oil and work in the salt and pepper.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Fire up a grill pan so it’s good and hot. Put the meat on a diagonal so it sears, about 3 minutes. Rotate 90 degrees and sear for three more. Turn it over and do the same, three minutes, rotate, three minutes. This gives it a nice little cross-hatch. With a pair of large tongs also brown the sides.

Move the beef to a wire rack and put it in a roasting pan. Put the pan in the oven for 15 minutes. You should really have an oven thermometer for this. The meat should have an internal temperature of at least 130 degrees. This is on the rare side so you also might want to slice it in the middle and see how red it is. The higher quality the meat the rarer it should be, but some people do not like to hear the cow moo, shall we say, and I personally will not judge you if you stick it in for longer.

B: What does Cousin Matthew do?

If you don’t have a grill pan, and there was a time when I did not, preheat an oven to 350 or 375 degrees. Don’t pound the meat, as cathartic as that can be, and don’t rub in olive oil, just the salt and pepper. In a large skillet on high heat put the olive oil in here with some butter. When it starts bubbling carefully place the beef (you don’t want to splash boiling oil on yourself, and any Crusader from the Middle Ages will tell you that) and let it brown, 3—4 minutes. Turn it over with tongs and brown the other side. Now brown the rest of the sides, 3—4 minutes per. Kitchen tongs I can not recommend enough by the way. They have 1,000 uses. I use mine almost every and I have them in three different sizes.

Remove and put on a rack in a roasting pan and into the oven it goes. Since the beef is not 2” thick the oven is at a higher temperature. Leave it in there for 15 minutes minimum, consult the meat thermometer if possible, cut in if you want to have a little look-see. 

That’s done. Either way, take the meat out of the oven and move to a serving plate. Loosely tent it in tin foil to keep it warm. 

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For the sauce:

You actually have a little leeway with this but not much.

2 tbsp. tarragon vinegar. If you don’t have this, use white wine vinegar. You need tarragon in some form, I think that’s what makes this a Béarnaise sauce.

1/4 c. dry white wine

1/4 c. minced shallots (if you have a garlic press, just sayin’…)

A very little black pepper. If you have a pepper grinder one or two turns.

1 tbsp. minced tarragon. This is a pain in the neck, because it usually comes chopped up small but not small enough! Try to get the pieces about half as big. If you don’t have tarragon vinegar you’re going to need a little more. Put this in a small bowl.

3 yolks from large eggs. For our second special guest appearance, Martha Stewart tells us to separate eggs in the most traditional way. Put out two small bowls. Over one, crack an egg and pour the contents into your hand. Let the whites drip through your fingers. When you only have yolk left put that in the other small bowl. Wash your hands thoroughly after this.

1 or even 1 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened. J + J were not fooling around.

A little more coarse salt. Why not just use salted butter? Do not ask questions.

In a small saucepan over medium heat put in the vinegar, wine, shallots, and about 1/2 of the tarragon, 2/3 if your vinegar is tarragon deprived. Just pinch it in. Let it bubble away until there’s not much left. This is really just flavoring for the eggs and butter. It should take about 5—10 minutes. Add the yolks and 1 tbsp. water. Whisk this until it thickens, about 2 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and keep whisking but not too furiously. This is kind of fun because the eggs will froth and then settle down and thicken more. Jules and Jacques remind us to remember to whisk the bottom and the sides because the yolks, if they had their way, would try to scramble themselves in little hideouts. At some point you’ll have a nice creamy egg mixture.

Take off the heat. Now, a little at a time, add the softened butter. Whisk to combine. Add a little more. Whisk again. Add and repeat. Add and repeat. Make sure everything is combined well. 

When it’s good and thick, throw on some salt and the rest of the tarragon. Whisk that in a couple of times but not too much.

Phew.

Try to remember where you left the beef. Slice it like meat loaf, or if you’re Jules and Jacques, “cut on the bias.” I’m not sure what that means. The presentation is up to you. They say serve the sauce on the side. You could use a small bowl or a gravy boat or ramekins if you have any (people may have to share.) I get the Beleaguered Kitchen Elf to plate the beef slices and hand them to me, and I spoon a dollop of sauce over each right from the saucepan. Of course, this is a faint memory, from when I was having people over and making greater quantities of this stuff.

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A great (and very traditional) way to serve this is with steamed asparagus and baby potatoes. I am a fan of Béarnaise sauce, so I make extra and put a little of that over the asparagus. I make the beef first and try to keep it warm because I need the oven for the baby potatoes. It actually might be preferable to make the sauce first and then the beef, because you want the beef to be warm, but I do not (YET!) have a double oven.

Every Food Network chef and countless blogs tell you to do the same thing, roast the potatoes with rosemary and garlic, and I do what our next and final celebrity guest, Rachael Ray, does. Get your oven up to 450 degrees. Wash, do not peel, and slice 1 lb of baby potatoes in half. Put them on a cookie sheet with 3 cloves of garlic, peeled but whole. Just put the potatoes on, they don’t have to be face-down. Drizzle them with olive oil and sprinkle them with finely chopped rosemary leaves (that would be 1 tbsp. according to Rache but I just sprinkle away) and some salt and pepper. Cook them for 20 minutes. I check them after about 15 minutes and if any of them look like they are burning I move them around with my tongs. THEN, after the initial placement in the oven, I start making the sauce.

The last thing I do is steam the asparagus. You can do this quickly by putting a skillet over medium heat, add a little water so it just fills to maybe a 1/4″ depth, not enough to cover the asparagus, add the asparagus, and cover. This only takes five minutes maximum. When they’re done, put them in a wide, shallow bowl, butter them, add salt and pepper, and with your tongs mix them. Or just add them to the plates and press more of the Béarnaise sauce into service.

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So “Julie & Julia.” I thought Julie Powell’s blog was insufferable. A few friends and I hate-read it religiously. Then it became a book. Then it became a great movie except for one thing: Julie’s character is in it. But if you want to see the movie it really should have been, a loving homage to Julia Child as portrayed by Meryl Streep, and cut out the self-pitying Julie, the brilliant Chris Farias has done us all a favor and made a “director’s cut.” It’s been up on Vimeo for years. If anyone disagreed with this they would have brought a copyright injunction, but I’m guessing the principals, including maybe Amy Adams herself (who played everyone’s annoying, self-involved, extremely un-self-aware “friend” Julie) is perfectly happy with this. Watch this version while you eat the Chateaubriand.