Beef Stroganoff: Learn to Love the Tail

The last of the freezer-emptiers. I’ve had a delicious-looking piece of beef fillet – the tail end – staring at me from my freezer for the last few months. Its time has come.

Beef Fillet

Many people think of beef fillet as a piece of meat that’s too expensive for them and is only for special occasions. And with regular beef fillet, that’s probably the case - for most of us, at least.

However, the tail end (the thinnest end of a whole beef fillet) is a little different. It’s just as tender as the main fillet, but it’s too small to cut into decent steaks, which is what most people like from beef fillet. It’s therefore a bit of a pain for butchers; they can split up the whole fillet and sell it for steaks at a profit, but they’re left with the tail end. The net result is that you can often get it cheaply.

Now, there’s no reason why you can’t just cut up your tail end of fillet into tiny little mini-steaks and cook them as you would a normal fillet steak. Make sure you cut across the grain of the meat – don’t be tempted to cut with the grain to get a bigger steak, as it’ll make the meat seem tougher in your mouth. As a way of getting fillet steak for cheap, the tail isn’t at all bad.

Beef stroganoff

If the idea of teeny-tiny fillet steaks freaks you out (or you want more than one mini-steak in your tummy), beef stroganoff is a fantastic way to go. Rather like a stew or curry, it involves small pieces of beef in a creamy, paprika-flavoured sauce. Because the tender fillet needs so little cooking, it’s a really quick supper as well as being delicious.

Beef stroganoff originated in 19^th-century Russia, but has been much adapted as it became globally popular. It generally includes beef fillet, onions, paprika and sour cream. You can also include mustard (which I did), tomato purée (just add a tablespoonful with the paprika) and mushrooms (I left them out because I hate them, but you can just slice them and sweat with the onions if you like).

This is honestly a lovely dish: not the most photogenic, but yummy enough to make up for it. It’s classically served with crispy straws or matchsticks of potato, but I think it’s great with braised or steamed rice. 

This picture would be much improved if I hadn't run out of parsley...

Ingredients

(Serves 2)

For the Stroganoff:

Tail end of beef fillet

Butter

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 tbsp paprika

1 heaped tsp Dijon mustard

A splash of vegetable oil

A small splash of white wine

2 tbsp sour cream or crѐme fraîche

Juice of ½ lemon

A little chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

For the braised rice:

½ onion, finely chopped

Some butter

2-3 handfuls of rice per person

Enough chicken stock to cover the rice

A bouquet garni (shop-bought is fine, or tie some parsley, thyme and a bay leaf together with string)

Method

First, get the braised rice going. Just sweat half a finely chopped onion in butter, then add the rice and stir to coat it with butter. Pour over enough chicken stock to cover fully, add a bouquet garni, cover with a lid and simmer in the oven at 180°c for 15-20 minutes, or until the rice is cooked and almost all the stock has evaporated. If the stock evaporates too fast, top up with a little water.

While the rice cooks, cut the beef fillet into rounds about 1cm thick. Then slice each round into three or four strips. In searing hot oil, cook the pieces of beef a handful at a time until the outside browns. Bear in mind that because the beef is so tender and so thinly sliced, it will cook – or, indeed, overcook – very quickly. Don’t give it more than two minutes or so, and maybe even less.

Remove the meat, and in the same pan, sweat the onion in plenty of butter until it’s completely soft. Then add the paprika and mustard and cook for another minute or so. Return the beef to the pan and deglaze with the wine. Then stir in the sour cream (it works brilliantly with crѐme fraîche too). Taste and season with the salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Stir a little butter through the rice with a fork and serve with the stroganoff, garnished with a generous sprinkling of chopped parsley. A delicious and convenient supper in 25 minutes!

Pan-fried Salmon fillet with tangy herby crème fraiche

I opened the freezer a few days ago. Yes, yes, snigger all you like, of course I often do this. But these days it’s more often to put something in than take something out. My freezer is a graveyard of half-packets of bacon (‘I was going away for a few days and it seemed such a waste...’); odd ends of bread; chicken Kievs I’ve forgotten about; tubs of ice cream; and (my personal favourite) five brace of Whitfield grouse brought down from home in a fit of nostalgia a few months back. Which I will definitely eat any day now. Honestly.

The problem is, I’m moving house in a few weeks, and most of the stuff in the freezer is going to have to go. Oops. Better start eating it.

The first thing that caught my eye as I thought this was a single lonely salmon fillet. Much easier to deal with than five brace of grouse! It also reminded me of a few different crème fraiche dips and general concoctions I’ve recently. They’ve always seemed to go down well. So I thought I’d defrost, marinade and pan-fry this salmon, tell you all about it, and then give you a few other ideas for how you can use crème fraiche to generally jazz up your culinary life.

So here goes:

For the Salmon recipe:

Ingredients

(per person)

1 good quality piece of salmon fillet, wild if possible

Olive oil

Lemon juice

Several sprigs of dill and parsley

Salt and pepper

1-2 tbsp crème fraiche, depending on how greedy you’re feeling

2 tsp finely chopped parsley

2 tsp finely chopped dill

Zest and juice of ½ lemon

½ small shallot, finely chopped

Couple of drops of Tabasco if you like it hot

Salt and plenty of ground black pepper

Method

• Let’s face it; this isn’t a particularly tricky one. Marinade the salmon (I actually did this in a sealable freezer bag, which is great because you can throw it out afterwards instead of washing it up!) by pouring over a good slosh of olive oil and squeezing in plenty of lemon juice. Squidge up the sprigs of herb in your hands to bruise them (helps release their flavour) and add them to the marinade, making sure they get covered in oil.

• Season the whole lot with salt and pepper, make sure everything is covering the salmon and they’re all getting pretty close and personal, then leave it all to marinade for at least half an hour.

You probably don’t want to leave it much longer than this because the lemon juice in there will start to ‘cook’ the salmon, making it turn opaque. Out of interest, this is actually a legitimate cooking method (chemical cooking) and if you leave small pieces of salmon for long enough (say, over half an hour) in a marinade with plenty of lemon juice, you can eat it just as it is. I’m going to cook this piece, though, because I like the caramelised flavour you get when you sear salmon.

• While the salmon’s in the marinade, you can get on with the crème fraiche mixture, which is easy peasy. Chop everything that needs chopping, zest and juice the lemon, mix the whole lot together and season it well with salt and plenty of pepper (less pepper if you’re using Tabasco). Taste and adjust to suit you. Done.

If that didn’t take you half an hour, I’m not surprised. Have a glass of wine while you wait for the salmon to marinade. Yes, that is part of the recipe.

• Get some olive oil in a frying pan nice and hot. When you’re ready for the salmon and it’s ready for you, take it out of the marinade and pick off any herbs that stick. Pop it in the frying pan skin side up to start with. It should sizzle straight away, and if the pan’s hot enough it shouldn’t stick.

• Cook on that side until the outside is turning golden brown, and then turn it over onto the skin side for most of the rest of the cooking time. When it’s perfectly cooked, it should still be moist inside, and just turning opaque in the centre. Just cook it how you like it, though. Obviously.

I shoved some halved baby plum tomatoes in the frying pan with the salmon after I turned it, just because they were hanging around and I like fried tomatoes. You can do this too if you like. Don't forget to season them.

• Once the salmon’s cooked, whack the lot on a plate and spoon over the crème fraiche mixture. Eat with some salad and those tomatoes, and marvel at the power of the quick, healthy(ish) supper.

Yes, a food styling course is indeed top of my Christmas list...

A few other things you can do with crème fraiche

Dip for crisps: Mix it with grated parmesan, plenty of finely chopped fresh herbs (including chives, parsley, and whatever you fancy), lemon juice, Tabasco, salt and pepper.

Canapés: Mix with lots of lemon juice and season well, then heap it on warm blinis or oatcakes and top with smoked salmon and maybe some onuga caviar (not the crazy expensive stuff - you can get this kind in little jars from the supermarket).

With rare beef: Mix with a spoonful of your favourite mustard, finely chopped shallot, Tabasco, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, dash of lemon juice, finely chopped tarragon, parsley and chives, and salt and pepper.

With lamb: Wrap a whole blub of garlic in tinfoil with a bit of oil, salt and pepper and roast it in a hot oven for half an hour. Squeeze out the cloves and put the resulting mush through a sieve. Mix this with the crème fraiche and add a tiny bit of chopped shallot and the chopped herbs of your choice (don’t use rosemary or thyme though, they’re too hard). Season. Nice with roast lamb instead of gravy on a hot day.

With chicken, beef or fish: Mix with chopped chilli, lime zest and juice, chopped shallot, Thai fish sauce and chopped coriander.

As pudding: Mix in a bit of icing sugar to sweeten and eat with ripe berries or slices of mango. Marginally healthier than cream...

Those of us who have seen that South Park episode (no link, because it’s not for the fainthearted...Google it yourself, ‘South Park crème fraiche’ should do it) might have been a little put off this best of dairy products. I think this is a shame. Ok, it’s not very ‘fine dining’, but crème fraiche can be a great friend to the home cook. Let it into your life, and it’ll work for you. You won’t regret it.

A Porky Dilemma

A preliminary note - be picky about your pig

These days, pork is much less fatty that it used to be. The public’s taste tends to be for lean meat, so animals are now bred lean. This is why many people complain that roast pork is ‘too dry’ – the modern meat contains less veins of fat, despite the fact that fat is what used to give proper roast pork its moisture and deep flavour. However, some specialist breeders and food outlets are fighting this trend, particularly by introducing more unusual breeds of pig whose meat has fallen off the map. I’d urge you to search out this superior pork – it’ll make all the difference to your meal.

What to do with pork fillet?

Pork fillet is one of those things I’m never sure what to do with. I found some lurking at the bottom of my freezer recently, and immediately panicked about how to use it up. Just like beef fillet, it’s a lean cut which benefits from quick cooking to keep it tender and moist. Because it’s actually fat that gives meat a lot of its flavour, pork fillet (again like its beefy counterpart) is not, perhaps, the most flavoursome cut. Its appeal rests in its tender texture. However, unlike beef fillet, it can’t be eaten raw: unless your meat is carefully sourced and checked, raw pork can carry tapeworm, hookworm and various other nasties. So all those carpaccios and rare steaks – all that’s best about well-sourced beef fillet – are out of the equation with pork.

How, then, to make the best of this cut of lovely meat? With quick but thorough cooking, I think, and with lots of flavour added to make up for its lack of fat. A stir-fry springs to mind. The one below uses Thai flavours but is not authentically Thai, because while I love the Asian ingredients I’ve used here, I’m not nearly experienced enough in their proper use to presume to tell you about it. I can only tell you what I like to do with them.

A bit about stir-frying

To me, the principle of stir-frying is to cook your ingredients fast in a shallow layer of hot oil, continually moving them around by stirring them or tossing them in the pan keep the cooking even. It’s similar to the technique to French call sauté. You need to use oil with a high smoke point (if you’re not sure what that means, it’s the temperature at which the oil starts to smoke in the pan. Any cooking oil should do, but ideally not olive oil, which burns too easily). Later, I’ve said to ‘deglaze’ the pan with a mixture of lime juice, soy sauce and Thai fish sauce. Again, this is both a French and an Asian technique, and how I do it is not particularly authentic. Still, I like it.

The list of ingredients is long for this one, as is the method. It’s a lot easier than it looks, although the amount of chopping may sound a bit excessive. Do you really want to spend half an hour or more chopping stuff up? I think you do, for two reasons: First, it’s therapeutic, especially if you stick on a bit of music or catch up with some TV. You might even enjoy it. Second, you’ll definitely enjoy the meal. And from personal experience, I can guarantee that the leftovers taste fantastic cold the next day.

Make it your own!

As usual, remember that you can always put your own stamp on your food. By all means use different vegetables to the ones I've specified: red pepper springs to mind for some reason. Also fresh bean sprouts. The tail end of a beef fillet would be a fantastic replacement for the pork - ask your butcher. It's a lot cheaper than the fat end! Try adding some good-quality Thai curry paste (with the veg) and extra coconut milk (at the end) to turn your stir-fry into an extra-quick curry. Or you could marinade the pork for a while, with a bit of chilli, lime, garlic, soy sauce, nam pla and so on...

As always, the culinary world’s your oyster. Or your pork fillet, in this case. 

Ingredients

1 large courgette

Piece of whole pork fillet – it should look like the about same amount as you have of courgette

1 lime, zest and juice

1 handful unsalted cashews

1 chunk fresh ginger (about the size of your thumb), peeled and grated

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

3-6 spring onions

Splash of soy sauce

Splash of nam pla (Thai fish sauce)

About 1/3 of a tin of coconut milk

Vegetable or sesame oil (olive at a pinch, but ideally not)

Small bunch of coriander

Thin noodles (fresh or dried)

Method

First of all, get all your ingredients chopped and prepared. Zest and juice the lime; grate the ginger; peel and crush the garlic; de-seed and finely chop the chilli (include the seeds if you like a bit more heat). Pull most of the stems off the coriander and roughly chop it. Cut the white end of the spring onions into small, wafer-thin rounds, and the floppy green end into thin strips. Open your tin of coconut milk and stir the solids into the liquid underneath. Fish your cashews out from the bag. You want everything to hand once you start cooking.

To prepare the courgette, peel off thin strips with a vegetable peeler. Cut these in half widthways, then pile them up and slice them lengthways into quarters. You should end up with thin, ribbon-shaped pieces that are about half the length of the original courgette.

If your noodles are dried, you need to cook them: pop them into salted water which has reached a rolling boil. Once they’re floppy and a bit softened, drain them and put them straight into a bowl of cold water to cool. The best way of telling if they’re done is to taste them! It doesn’t matter if they’re a tiny bit underdone, as you’re going to heat them up once you’ve finished the stir-fry anyway.

Final bit of preparation is the pork. First, slice the fillet into thin rounds. They should be less than 0.5cm thick if you can manage it (the main thing is to have a sharp knife!). Then slice up the rounds into thin strips, about the width of your strips of courgette or thinner.

Now you’re there with your preparation, you’re only ten minutes or so away from dinner. Hang in there – this is the good bit.

Pour a little pool of oil into the most non-stick frying pan or wok you have. Put it over a high heat until the oil is really hot. It shouldn’t be smoking – that means it’s close to burning – but it should be just below that. Drop a piece of pork in to test; if it sizzles, you’re on the money.

Slip all the pork into the frying pan, taking care it doesn’t spit hot oil all over you. Cook it fast until each piece is golden brown all over, keeping it moving with a spoon or spatula and always making sure it doesn’t stick. Then take it out of the pan and set it aside of a moment.

Now for the veg. Keep the pan hot and don’t worry about changing the oil – all that flavour from the pork will get soaked up by your veg as it cooks. Add the chilli, ginger and lime zest first and cook for half a minute or so. Then add the garlic and give it another half minute before you put in the courgette and both cuts of spring onion. Once the courgette looks fully cooked everything else should be too, so add cashews and put the pork back in at this point.

Now you deglaze – add the lime juice, soy sauce and nam pla, and scrape all the flavoursome goodies off the bottom of the pan as it bubbles madly. Turn the heat down a notch and stir in the coconut milk, then scrape the whole lot out of the pan and put it somewhere warm.

Last but not least, put the noodles in the pan (again, don’t clean it first) and stir them around a bit over the heat for a minute or two. At this point, if you like, you can add the stir-fry mixture to the noodles. I like to keep them separate for some mysterious reason, but each to their own.

Serve up in bowls, with a slice of lime and a generous sprinkling of chopped coriander to bring the colours back to life. Was it worth all that chopping? Of course it was!