Home › Meats and Entrees › Pilaff of Beef
Pilaff of Beef
(Barcelona.) Cut 1 pound of tender beef--fresh meat--into 4-inch slices, add 1 onion, minced fine, in butter, a bit of celery, some parsley, thyme, seasoning, and sufficient stock to moisten all. Cook until the meat is done, add a spoonful of white wine, pour on a hot dish, arrange around 1/2 pound of rice, boiled in some stock, and cover with tomato sauce.
BRAISED BEEF, en daube (Marseilles.) Lard closely 6 pounds of beef, and soak overnight in enough mild vinegar to cover it. Drain it; brown it on both sides in a casserole or deep pan, with a little suet and some flour. Add 1 1/2 quarts of boiling water, 2 bayleaves, 6 cloves, 6 allspice, some parsley, 2 carrots, 1 turnip, and 1 onion, sliced, salt, and pepper. Cover closely, and cook slowly for 4 hours, turning the meat several times. Take it out of the broth, and put in a mould of proper size; lay a weight on top and let it cool. Clarify the broth, add sufficient gelatine to make a jelly, and pour around the meat in the mould. When firm, turn out and serve cold, in slices.
Two dishes share this page: a quick Catalan beef pilaff and a Provençal daube set in its own jelly. Neither gives quantities for the seasonings, and both assume a cook who tastes as she goes.
- "4-inch slices""4-inch slices" is very likely a misprint or a loose rendering — 1/4-inch would make more sense — since 4-inch slices of a single pound of beef are hard to reconcile with the small amount of stock called for. Cutting the meat into strips or cubes of about an inch will let it cook evenly. The recipe gives no time, only "cook until the meat is done."
- Rice proportionsHalf a pound of rice is roughly 1 1/4 cups dry, which will absorb about 2 1/2 cups of stock. Against a single pound of beef that makes for a modest portion of meat per person; the recipe itself gives no serving count.
- "Sufficient stock to moisten"For the pilaff this means barely covering the meat — perhaps a cup. It should reduce to a sauce, not a soup, before the wine goes in at the end so the alcohol has a moment to cook off.
- LardingTo lard is to thread strips of pork fat through lean meat with a larding needle. These are uncommon in modern kitchens, and fatback is not always sold ready cut. A well-marbled chuck or brisket, or a piece barded with sheets of fat tied around it, is a reasonable substitute over four hours, though it does not enrich the interior in the same way.
- CasseroleHere the word means a heavy lidded pot; the recipe has the meat browned in it and then simmered on the stovetop, closely covered. A Dutch oven serves. If you prefer to move it to a low oven for the four hours, that is a modern convenience rather than anything the recipe asks for.
- The overnight vinegar soakDo this covered in the refrigerator, not on a counter. Mild vinegar means a wine vinegar diluted with water, not distilled white at full strength, which will bleach and toughen the surface of six pounds of beef.
- Gelatine, unmeasured"Sufficient gelatine to make a jelly" is the recipe's weakest instruction. A well-clarified beef broth with the bones and connective tissue of a long braise behind it may set on its own; if not, about 1 tablespoon of powdered gelatine per pint of liquid gives a sliceable set. Test a spoonful on a cold saucer before committing the batch.
- Pressing and chillingThe weighted mould compacts the meat so it slices cleanly. Give it several hours in the refrigerator — the original assumed a cold larder — and turn out by dipping the mould briefly in warm water.
- Clarifying the brothSkim the fat thoroughly first, then clarify with beaten egg white and strain through a cloth. Any fat left behind will surface as a cloudy grey film on the finished jelly.
Pilaff reaching a Barcelona kitchen is a reminder of how far the Persian and Turkish rice dish travelled through the Mediterranean, into a country whose rice cookery had come centuries earlier through Moorish al-Andalus; here it has been reduced to stewed beef ringed with stock-boiled rice under tomato sauce. The daube beside it is the genuine article from Marseilles: beef marinated in acid, braised for hours with cloves and allspice, then set cold in its own clarified jelly. Cold jellied meats suited such cooking, since a well-set aspic seals the surface and keeps the slices moist in a period before reliable refrigeration. This is a traveller's collection, gathering dishes city by city and writing them down as a cook might explain them verbally, with seasonings left to the eye.