Onglet with bearnaise and Pommes Pont Neuf
Posted: 17 July '09 by Niall
Or steak and chips with bearnaise sauce to you and me!
Last Monday and Tuesday were bank holidays in Northern Ireland, so we decided to celebrate the long weekend with (another) meal together. Paul happily scoured St. George’s Market for some excellent foccacia and ciabatta from The Yellow Door, while Kelly and I set our minds to the rest of the feast.. what to have, what to have..
Being dedicated carnivores, the answer was fairly straightforward – beef! And what better way to enjoy a juicy cut of meat than the Parisian bistro classic “Onglet with bearnaise and Pommes Pont Neuf”?
Bearnaise Sauce
Bearnaise is a wonderful accompaniment to steak – full of aniseed flavour, deliciously creamy with a slight acidic edge.
Ingredients
- 240g butter
- 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 4 tbsp finely chopped tarragon
- 30 g finely chopped shallots
- a good pinch of crushed black pepper
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 tbsp cold water
- good squeeze of lemon juice
Method
- Put the butter in a saucepan over low heat. When the butter separates pour the clarified butter into a container, leaving the milky sediment behind.
- In another saucepan, add the vinegar, 2 tablespoons of the tarragon, the shallot and crushed peppercorns and simmer gently until the liquid is reduced by half.
- Remove from the heat, pour into a bowl through a sieve, and allow to cool.
- Get a nice deep saucepan and pour in your egg yolks and a little water, whisking lightly as you add the vinegar mixture. Place over a very low heat and whisk continuously for about 10 minutes until the sauce emulsifies. Do not allow it to reach anywhere near boiling point.
- Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the clarified butter a little at a time. You’ll notice the sauce takes on a nice rich, oily shimmer. The consistency should be similar to mustard or mayonnaise.
- Stir in the remaining chopped tarragon, a squeeze of lemon, and season to taste
And that’s it – you’ve made bearnaise! Now for the chips..
Triple-cooked Chips
Triple-cooked? Is it worth the hassle? Well, yes, I think it is. Cooking the potatoes three times gives you a fluffy centre and a crisp exterior – the “holy grail” of chip-making!
Ingredients
- 1 litre of Groundnut oil
- A good pinch of sea salt
- Maris Piper potatoes (they are the best for chips) cut into thick batons
Method
- After chipping the potatoes, make sure you rinse them thoroughly to remove the excess starch – it will give the chips a lighter texture.
- Place the chips in a large saucepan, covering them with cold water, and add a pinch of salt. You should bring the water to the boil and cook for 10–12 minutes, or until you can insert a knife easily through the centre of the largest chip.
- Drain and run the chips under very cold water to prevent further cooking.
- Pat your parboiled chips dry with kitchen towel.
- Fill a saucepan with your groundnut oil and heat it to 130°C (hot, but not ferociously so).
- Carefully lower your chips into the hot oil in batches of 8–10, cooking for 4–6 minutes, until they start to colour – you want a bubbled surface with a hint of the golden colour they will achieve in the next step.
- Remove the batches from the oil and place onto a kitchen towel to remove any excess oil and, when they have all been cooked, allow to cool.
- For the final cooking, heat the same oil to 180°C and again, lower small batches into it. Cook for 2–3 minutes or until crisp and golden. As they come out of the fryer, drain on kitchen paper and give each batch of chips a good sprinkling of sea salt.
And finally..
The penultimate element is this fantastic meal is your steak. Considering the length of this post already, I think I’ll cover cooking times in a separate post – what I will say is that this meal deserves a great steak. We eventually went for fillets because they looked so good (more of this elsewhere) and were easy to find, but the more traditional onglet is just as good.
All that remains is to find a full-bodied claret and you’ll have as good a night as we had. Enjoy!
Tags: bearnaise, beef, beef fillet, french food, onglet, pommes pont neuf, recipe
Categories: Recipes
