No. 1582

Tendon or Gristle of Veal a la Biarritz

Tendon de Veau a la Biarritz

Pare and cut the tendon into pieces measuring three inches long fry them in clarified butter, drain off the butter and add to the meat some white wine, a little espagnole sauce (No. 414), and meat glaze (No. 402). Heat some clarified butter and add to it well cleansed Piedmontese rice; when very hot moisten with broth (No. 194a), boil and let cook in a moderate oven for twenty minutes, then add to it the meats and leave it in the oven for fifteen minutes longer. Dress the tendons and rice and surround with veal kidneys, fried in butter, and fine herbs.

← No. 1581 Tendon or Gristle of Veal a la Bayeux Veal No. 1583 Calves' Tongues a la Flamande →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a kitchen where brown sauces, glaze and cooked tendons were already standing by; the recipe is an assembly, not a start-to-finish method. A few things need filling in before it will work at home.

What a tendron actually is"Tendon" here is not sinew but the strip of soft rib cartilage from the veal breast, cut crosswise into what French butchers call tendrons. Ask for veal breast cut across the bone-and-cartilage end, or use riblets from the breast.
They must be braised firstThis is the hinge. Raw cartilage will not soften in a 35-minute oven, and the recipe begins with tendons already cooked: it says only "pare and cut". Classical practice was to blanch and braise tendrons until gelatinous, often pressing them flat under a weight to cool, before cutting. Allow a couple of hours of gentle braising in broth before you reach the first line of this recipe.
Moderate ovenRoughly 325-350F in modern terms; Ranhofer gives no figure. The rice goes in for twenty minutes, then the meat is added for a final fifteen.
Espagnole and meat glazeNo. 414 is the old brown mother sauce built on roux and brown veal stock; No. 402 is stock reduced to a syrup. A good demi-glace or two tablespoons of heavily reduced brown veal stock stands in for both, and the glaze is what gives the dish its gloss.
Piedmontese riceNorthern Italian rice of the short-to-medium-grain type still grown in Piedmont, the same family of rices from which arborio and carnaroli later came. It is treated here as a pilaf, not a risotto: hot butter, then broth, then the oven, undisturbed.
Broth quantityNone is given. For a pilaf of this kind use roughly one and a half times the volume of the rice in liquid, and check at twenty minutes rather than trusting the clock.
Veal kidneysOrder them; they are rarely on display. Peel the membrane, cut out the hard core of fat, slice and fry hot and fast in butter so they stay pink inside. Overcooked kidney turns grainy and ammoniac.
Fine herbsFines herbes means chopped parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives, added at the very end so they keep their perfume.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of a grand-restaurant repertoire, and its veal chapter shows how thoroughly that kitchen used the whole animal: several consecutive numbers are given over to tendrons, the gelatinous rib cartilage of the breast that most modern butchers grind or discard. Braised long enough, cartilage turns to something between meat and jelly, and the classical kitchen prized exactly that texture against a sharp brown sauce. The name a la Biarritz follows the period habit of labelling a garnish after a fashionable place — Biarritz was then at the height of its reputation as a resort of the French and Spanish courts — and, like most such names in this book, it signals the dressing of rice and kidneys rather than any documented local dish.