Perfect for Pairing with Rack of Lamb and Filet Mignon!
Ingredients:
– 1/2 Fresh Head of Garlic, each clove peeled.
– 1 Large Garlic Shallot (or enough small ones to make up the same size)
– 1 cup of Beef Stock
– 1/2 tablespoon of Salted Butter
– Peppercorn Blend
– Sea Salt Grinder
– Cornstarch
– Glass of Wine (For the cook, of course)
Prep and Cooking Time ~1 hour, Serves 1-2.
Directions:
1) Gather Your ingredients, a medium sized pot, a sharp knife, and a cutting board. Peel the garlic cloves and shallots, and cut off any bad looking spots.
2) Turn the stove on medium high and put the butter in the bottom to melt.
3) Slice the garlic cloves and shallots into large slices, and put them into the pan with the butter to cook down and brown just slightly. Stir them frequently to keep any one side of the pieces from getting overcooked.
4) Take about 1 Teaspoon of the Ground Sea Salt
5) Add the Peppercorn Blend
6) Keep mixing the ingredients around periodically so they don’t over brown. You’re looking for something golden similar to the picture below. Too much browning produces a bitter flavor, so less really is more here.
7) Once the veggies are ready, it’s time to deglaze the pan. To do this, turn your heat up to high, and be sure to keep the veggies moving so they don’t over brown. Take the cup of Beef Stock and pour it right into the pot. Use your stirrer or spatula to scrape along the bottom to make sure everything is brought into solution – make sure you’re not using metal in a pan that’s not safe for it! I usually use wooden spoons for this. Wait for the Stock + Veggies to start boiling rapidly.
8) Once the mixture is boiling, pour in the 1 cup of red wine and allow the mixture to come to a full boil again. As for wines, you can more or less use anything you want depending on the flavor you want to achieve. I usually like to use a wine that’s left from the night before – still good, not as tasty, but certainly not vinegar ruined. Different reds produce different flavors, so you have to learn your own preference. We prefer Shiraz or Cabs usually.
9) Once the mixture comes back to a boil, lower the temperature to a medium, medium high heat. This might be a moving target depending on your stove and what volume you’re in. Just know that you want the mixture to be at a very low boil – bubbles still rising and escaping. Now you get to be patient and enjoy that glass of wine while the miracle of evaporation does the work for you. 🙂 Just make sure as the volume decreases, that you adjust the temperature of the stove to compensate.
10) Once you’ve reduced it down to about a third of the staring volume (after the wine addition), it’s time to thicken it up some. But before you do, this is the point where you should taste it and decide if you want to add a little more salt or not – it should be closest to the final flavor at this point.
11) After you’ve decided the favor is right, it’s time to add a little cornstarch to help thicken things up a little. I only add a half of a teaspoon, and try my hardest to distribute it well, although it tends to clump a little which is fine because it gets strained out in the next step. And before you say it, yes, I realize that a true reduction doesn’t use thickeners, but I’ve found that adding this step improves the final consistency and appearance because it binds up any excess fats (mostly from the butter) that would otherwise just separate out once you stop stirring – and believe me, they look gross on the plate when they do that. Not appetizing. Let the mixture reduce down a little more to about a quarter of the starting volume.
12) When you get to the quarter volume mark, it’s time to strain out the veggies, peppercorns, and any little balls of cornstarch bound to themselves out. You’ll see below that I use a concoction of a sifter combined with one of my bigger measuring cups for this. Whatever works is great. Make sure you get all of the solids out of the bottom of the pot since we still need it – I usually use a paper towel to flick anything that’s stuck out into the garbage.
13) Finally, pour the liquid back into the pot and keep it at a low temperature until the meat is ready. You can thicken it up some at this point by turning the heat up slightly, but everything should definitely stay below medium temp because it’s a quick process to go from just right to too thick at this point.
Serve over garlic mashed potatoes and a beautiful filet mignon or rack of lamb! Enjoy!