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Beef Tongue Financiere
Blanch a couple of fresh beef tongues, put them into a saucepan lined with vegetables cut in slices and a few small pieces of bacon, moisten with a little broth, cover the tongues with paper, put the saucepan on the fire with hot ashes on the lid, and cook until the tongues are quite tender. Remove and drain them; trim the thick or root ends, making them as round as possible, and with a sharp knife cut the tongues transversely to half their length and remove the top pieces. Cut these into slices and put them back in their places. Put a flat crouton of fried bread in the center of a dish, mask it with forcemeat poached in the oven, glaze the tongues and put them on it, with their root ends meeting in the middle; surround the base with a financiere garnishing and garnish with quenelles made with a spoon, and some larger ones studded with truffles. Serve with a sauceboatful of brown sauce reduced with wine. Should salted tongues be used they will only require to be boiled with plenty of water until they are tender, and then treated as above. Beef Tongue, Gourmet Style Boil a beef tongue in plenty of water for three hours. When cooked, drain, peel the skin off, and trim it nicely. Lard and braise four sweetbreads. Take the fillets of two or three chickens, trim them nicely, put them in a buttered sautepan and saute them. Peel sufficient potatoes that will when mashed fill a border, mould, boil till tender, then drain and mash them with a little butter; press them in a border mould, and set them in a bain-marie for a few minutes. When the fillets of chickens are cooked, take them out of the pan, and keep them hot. Pour one and one-half pints of white sauce, and one-half pint of veal stock into a saucepan, and boil till rather thickly reduced, stirring all the time; then mix one teacupful of cream with it, and season with a small quantity of moist sugar. Glaze the tongue and sweetbreads. Turn the potato border on a hot dish, put the tongue in the center, place two of the sweetbreads at each end, the fillets of chicken at each side, pour the sauce over them, straining it through a fine hair sieve, and serve at once.
Two related presentations of braised beef tongue from the Waldorf's professional repertoire, written for a brigade that already knew what a financière garnish was. Almost all the labour is in the accompaniments; the tongue itself only needs long, patient moist heat.
- The hinge: peel the tongue while it is hotNeither version says so, but the rough outer skin only strips cleanly when the tongue is just out of the liquid and still steaming. Let it cool and you will be paring it off in shreds. Handle it with a towel, split the skin at the tip, and pull toward the root.
- "Hot ashes on the lid"This is a braise with heat from above as well as below, the old equivalent of an enclosed oven. A covered heavy pot in a moderate oven does much the same thing. The paper laid directly on the tongues keeps the exposed tops from drying where the shallow broth does not reach.
- How long is "quite tender"Fresh beef tongue runs 2 1/2 to 4 hours depending on size; a 3 lb tongue is typically done at about 3 hours. Test with a skewer at the thickest part of the root, which is the last place to give way. Undercooked tongue is rubbery and no amount of glazing hides it.
- Salted tongueThe note at the end refers to corned or brine-cured tongue, which was the common market form. Modern cured tongue should be soaked in cold water for several hours, or overnight, and the water changed once or twice before boiling, or the finished dish will be aggressively salty under the reduced sauce.
- Financiere garnishing, quenelles, forcemeatFinanciere is a classic garnish of cockscombs and kidneys, truffles, mushrooms, olives and quenelles in a Madeira-scented brown sauce. Cockscombs are effectively unobtainable; a garnish of mushrooms, olives, truffle and quenelles carries the idea. Quenelles here are poached dumplings of pounded veal or chicken forcemeat, shaped with two spoons.
- Old measuresA teacupful is usually reckoned at somewhere between half a cup and three-quarters of a cup; it was never a standardised measure. "Moist sugar" is unrefined soft brown sugar, used in a very small amount to round the sauce rather than to sweeten it. A "sautepan" is a straight-sided pan, and a bain-marie is simply a water bath to hold the potato border hot without colouring it.
- SweetbreadsThey need ordering ahead from a butcher. Standard practice, assumed rather than stated here, is to soak them in several changes of cold water, blanch, press under a weight until cold, then peel the membrane before larding and braising.
- YieldTwo tongues with garnish will serve twelve or more as a service platter; the gourmet version, with one tongue, four sweetbreads and chicken fillets inside a potato border, serves eight to ten. Both are built as centrepieces for a platter rather than as plated portions.
Financiere - "in the financier's style" - is one of the nineteenth-century French garnishes said to be named for the wealth it implies: truffles, cockscombs and kidneys, olives and quenelles bound in a Madeira brown sauce, the sort of thing Escoffier codified for restaurants serving people who could afford it. Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book collects the Waldorf's working repertoire, and tongue occupies an interesting place in it. It was cheap offal in the ordinary household and often bought ready-corned, but in the grand kitchen it was prized for its even, close texture, which slices cleanly and takes a glaze beautifully - a cut that rewarded exactly the kind of elaborate presentation described here, with the sliced top pieces returned to their places so the tongue arrives at table looking whole. The second version, with sweetbreads, chicken fillets and a potato border shaped in a border mould, reflects the era's taste for a single dish assembled from several separately cooked luxuries.