Braised beef cheeks and veal tongue with baby leeks and horseradish
from The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman
Thanks "chef Keller" for sharing this recipe with me. I was very interested to read how the dish came about, evolving from a simple beef cheek salad to a more complex "collective creation" through your pastry chef's suggestion of adding tongue. Its all from the same part of the animal, right? Makes sense.
So, lets just run through the ingredients shall we. There's only 23, not too bad I suppose. No, hold on, let me just turn to page 222 for the veal stock recipe. Let me see, 10 pounds of veal bones necks and backs, one calf's foot. 'kay.
Oh, and now I need to make white veal stock as well do I? So that's another 10 pounds of veal bones and one more calf's foot. I'll just add that to my shopping list. Ok, all set.
Whoops! Forgot about the tomato confit. Just let me see what I'll need for that - some tomatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme and a couple of hours to hang around until their done. Okey-dokey.
And there's the red wine marinade of course, how silly of me to forget the red wine marinade. Just a whole bottle plus some finely diced mirepoix of carrots, leeks and oh, you know the sort of thing.
I'll just pop out to Asda - see if I can round me up some beef cheeks and veal tongue shall I? While I'm queuing for a family sized meat feast pizza with extra cheese. I'll just swing by the veal bone aisle on my way to pick up a crate of lager.
And then, went I've spent an entire week's wage on offal, kosher salt and baby fucking leeks, I'll lock myself in my kitchen and dice, chop, fry and braise until my eyes bleed.
And after I've stacked the slices of beef cheek and veal tongue and re-heated them in the braising liquor and balanced tomato confit and a quenelle of horseradish cream on top of them and artfully scattered lettuce and dried horseradish (oh yeah, there's dried horseradish alright) on the plate and served it up to my kids who make retching noises while pretending to stick their fingers down their throats and I have to heat up the family sized meat feast pizza and drink a crate of lager because otherwise I'd have to kill myself...after all that "chef Keller", I'm getting in my car, driving to Gatwick Airport, getting a flight to San Francisco, hiring a car, driving to Yountville, parking outside The French Laundry, removing the tyre iron from the boot (that's the "trunk" to you - bloody Americans), walking through the garden to the rear kitchen entrance, asking politely where you are and then when I find you, beating you to a bloody pulp in front of the twenty gazillion chefs you employ to do all the hard work for you.
Get your tongue out of your cheek "chef Keller" and write a real recipe, because I'm not cooking that!
