Dontcha hate to get your cheeks pinched?

I would have never expected to enjoy this particular cut of beef, but cheeks are brilliant! The need some special treatment but the results, if handled even 3/4 correctly are outstanding.

Those of you who familiar with The French Laundry at Home will have more than likely already seen this dish fully blogged by Carol, and done with humor and style and great camera work...

Well for this blog you might get 1 of those 3... And even I don't know which one it will be... So without further rambling obfuscating I give you partial Tongue In Cheek from the French Laundry cook book.

I was inspired to try this part of the recipe by my experience with the Braised Veal Cheeks that I had at Roosters in Charlotte. Also I found beef cheeks for some ridiculous price like $1.25 a pound.

So with my newly acquired beef cheeks (Carol is dead on when she said that beef cheeks is fun and funny to say), I cracked open my, coffee table extravaganza, copy of, The French Laundry cookbook.

It starts by unpacking and trimming the cheeks. (Squeamish alert!)

The little pile of meat at the front of the picture is the part that I didn't keep, silver skin and membranes.

The second step is to make a batch of the Red Wine Marinade found on page 190.

1 bottle of good red wine (this will come back to bite you if you don't use a decent wine.) carrots, leeks, onions, garlic, flat leaf parsley, thyme and bay leaf.

Everything goes into a pot and is brought to a boil. The recipe states... "Tilt the pan away from the burner and carefully ignite the wine with a match." This is rather nerve racking in a kitchen with 8 foot ceilings and no commercial fire suppression system. It's also the best way to make sure that the alcohol is burned off so that it doesn't cook the meat while it is marinating. (Note to self: Make sure fire extinguisher is charged, as a precaution)

If you look closely you might be able to see the flames.

Once I couldn't get anymore vapors to ignite it was time to let the marinade cool.

I but the cheek in a one gallon zip-top vacuum bag and poured the room temp marinade in with it, sealed up the bag and stuck it in the fridge over night.

After a 8 to 12 hour soak, I removed the meat and strained the marinade into a pot and brought it to a boil. The vegetables are reserved for later.

While the marinade was getting it's boil on, I dredged the cheeks in all purpose flour and started to brown them in a  little peanut oil (my de facto cooking oil). It took about 3 minutes a side for the cheeks to get brown and crusty and ready for the next steps.

The marinade, once boiled and reduced a bit was strained again, this time through a coffee filter. Not part of the original recipe but I wanted to remove any little icky bits that the skimming didn't catch.

Per the recipe I had about a cup marinade.

The vegetables left from the marinade got a quick saute in the pan used to brown the meat.

Let me just say that throughout the process nothing had really tasted all that great, and the colors were almost disturbing... purple leeks and carrots, freaky. I did figure out the issue with the off flavor and this is were the quality of the wine comes into play... Cheap wine is not the best idea. I don't mean Thunderbird cheap but not anything I will buy again.  Lesson learned... I get it now even though I am not much of a wine person. Good wine = good food.

So now that I had all the parts ready, I was hoping that my bad choice of wine wouldn't ruin the final dish, but I had to put it together to find out.

Cheeks, marinade, vegetables, veal stock and water to cover went into a loaf pan of all things. I used a loaf pan because of the overall volume it held was just over what was needed to hold the ingredients without diluting the marinade/stock too much with water.

I covered the meat with a parchment lid... Neat idea. Cut parchment to the size and shape of the cooking vessel with a vent hole in the center so that the meat is protected from caramelizing and allows a little evaporation. Mr. Keller says "It's like having a lid and not having a lid at the same time." How Zen...

I cooked the cheeks for 4 hours at 300°, then let them rest for 30 minutes before even removing the parchment. That's a long 30 minutes, but worth the wait.

For the final plating I did a quick sauté of fingerling Yukon Gold potatoes and sliced the cheek into half inch slices. I also reduced some of the braising liquid until it was satiny smooth and coated the back of a spoon.

Oh Damn! it was good. My worries about the wine flavor were put to rest with the first bite. This had has good a flavor as the veal cheeks I had at Roosters. The texture was very nice but not as good as the veal. I really enjoyed the dish, and I learned lessons while making it. Two hallmarks of a good recipe to me.

I will make this again when the temperature is a bit lower. It's a perfect late fall or winter dish.

Anyone else out there tried variations on French Laundry recipes? Did they work? Did they fail? Tell me about what you experienced.

Cheers

Chris