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Pilaff of Tenderloin, Au Risotto
Finely chop one medium, white, sound onion and a sound green pepper, place them in a saucepan with a tablespoon melted butter; cook for three minutes without browning, gently stirring meanwhile; then add four ounces good, well-cleaned rice; stir well while cooking for one minute. Moisten with two gills white broth or hot water, one gill hot tomato sauce and one gill hot demi-glace. Season with half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon Spanish saffron and a saltspoon cayenne pepper. Cover the pan and set in a hot oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove and keep hot. Cut one pound and a half raw tenderloin of beef into half-inch-square pieces. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a saucepan, add the beef, season with half teaspoon salt, and let cook on a brisk fire for five minutes, gently tossing occasionally. Take up the beef with a skimmer and add it to the risotto. Mix well with a wooden spoon, place the pan in the oven for five minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish and serve. EGGS, AU BEURRE NOIR (BROWN BUTTER,) Lightly butter six shirred-egg dishes. Carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish. Season with half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper, evenly divided over them. Place in a hot oven for four minutes. Remove to a table. Place one ounce good butter in a small black frying pan and toss on a brisk fire until it attains a nice brown colour, then pour in a teaspoon good vinegar, lightly toss and then pour it over the eggs, evenly divided, and serve.
A hotel-kitchen dish built on two French sauces the home cook has to substitute for. Note that the page runs straight into a second, unrelated recipe for eggs in brown butter — the pilaff ends at "dress on a hot dish and serve."
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so the rice takes 1 cup of broth or water plus 1/2 cup tomato sauce and 1/2 cup demi-glace — 2 cups of liquid to 4 oz rice, which is generous but right for an oven-baked pilaff. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon; 1/4 teaspoon cayenne across the whole dish is assertive but not extreme.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no degrees, so read "hot" as a genuinely hot oven and judge by the pan. The covered pan is essentially braising the rice, so the exact heat matters less than keeping the lid tight for the full twenty-five minutes.
- Demi-glaceEspagnole reduced with brown stock to a glossy, concentrated sauce; a professional kitchen had it standing by. A well-reduced beef or veal stock, or a good commercial demi-glace concentrate diluted to sauce strength, gets you there. Plain canned broth will leave the dish thin and pale.
- White brothBouillon blanc: unbrowned veal or chicken stock. Any light chicken stock works, and the recipe itself concedes hot water.
- The riceFour ounces is a scant 2/3 cup by volume. "Well-cleaned" means rinsed of loose starch — worth doing here, since the dish should stay in separate grains despite the name risotto. Long-grain rice suits it better than arborio.
- Searing the beefA pound and a half of half-inch cubes will not brown in one pan in five minutes; it will steam. Work in two batches over high heat, or accept grey meat. The "skimmer" step exists to leave the butter and juices behind, but there is no reason to discard them — add them to the rice.
- Second oven stageFive minutes in the oven after the beef goes in finishes the cubes to about medium. If you seared hard, cut it to two or three minutes; tenderloin at this size overcooks quickly.
- YieldFour servings as a main course, six as part of a longer menu.
- The eggs, if you make themFour minutes in a hot oven gives set whites and liquid yolks in shallow shirred-egg dishes; deeper ramekins need longer. Brown the butter until it smells nutty, then stand back when the vinegar goes in — it will spit.
Alexander Filippini, for years a chef at Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book as a survey of what a well-run American hotel kitchen could put out, which is why so many of its titles stack up nationalities and techniques at once. "Pilaff" comes through Turkish pilav from Persian polow, and was current in French professional cookery by the nineteenth century as a standard method for oven-cooked rice; "au risotto" here is not the Italian dish of slowly stirred, starchy rice but a loose garnish term for rice cooked with onion, saffron and stock. The saffron and cayenne mark the dish as belonging to the vaguely Levantine register that turn-of-the-century menus filed under Turkish or Spanish without much distinction, while the demi-glace underneath it is entirely French — a good illustration of how the period's "world's kitchen" was assembled from a single sauce repertoire with different seasonings laid on top.