As you all know, I married into a family of chefs, wine experts, and foodies. My Mother-in-law is Head Chef of the foodie clan. She worships at the altar of Julia Child, devout in her belief that cream and butter are underused commodities. Her cat is named Julia.
Above all else, she is the master of the reduction sauce. She can do hundreds of different versions of a reduction... and each and every one of them are simply superb.
She has tried to teach me. I have tried to learn.
Finally, during her visit last week, I wised up. I got her to make two reduction sauces on consecutive nights. On the first night, I watched, drank wine, and ate. On the second night, I frantically typed a draft of this blog entry, trying to ask every stupid question I could think of along the way. I wanted to get every step down, and to understand why I was doing each thing. Some of it I already knew. Most of it I needed to re-learn.
Be forewarned: This is a really LONG and detailed post. It's sort of like reading the dissertations in Cooks Illustrated, except with (hopefully) more wit and decidedly less expertise. And no line drawings.
At any rate, here it is - Lamb with a rosemary red wine reduction, and a lot of detailed explanation along the way:
- Start by buying your lamb at Central Market. You will impress your visiting chef houseguest by pointing out the fois gras, rosemary bread, fresh Texas produce, and free samples. You'll feel like it's an extra-special meal even before you exit the grocery store (that advice, obviously, didn't come from my MIL)
- Take the lamb chops out of the fridge for 10-15 minutes before you begin. The risk of food poisoning has apparently been greatly exaggerated in my mind; allowing meat to relax on the counter will not kill your family.
- In a large saute pan, heat 2 T butter and 1.5 T olive oil over high heat. The oil allows you to heat the butter to a higher temperature without burning it. Who knew? The mixture should bubble and can brown slightly.
- Pat the meat dry with paper towels. This step is vital - you must eliminate the water, otherwise when you add the meat to the hot pan, you'll essentially be steaming the meat a bit as the water escapes. Think of all the innocent meat that I've steamed accidentally..... every single piece of meat I've ever cooked.
- Rub the chops with a clove of garlic, front and back. Salt and pepper them.
- Score the fat on the sides of the chops in one or two places; by cutting through the thick fat and fascia, you'll prevent curling as it cooks.
- Add the chops to the pan in a single layer. Brown on both sides. You want them to carmelize and turn a nice, even brown color. Dark brown is ideal, but not blackened. Black is bitter. The idea here is to sear the meat to seal the juices inside - a rookie move that even I know about!
- Reduce the temperature once both sides are browned. This part is always what kills me; I get the meat browned, but then I have no faith that it will actually cook through the middle, so I do silly things like raise the heat again, cover it with a lid, or panic and stuff everything in the oven. Part of the key here is to get a cut of meat that's the appropriate thickness. On the previous night, we made beef fillets with a similar reduction sauce; Lynn was careful to ask for meat that was just a little over 1 inch thick, about 6 oz. each.
- Carmelization gives the meat its flavor. This process requires oxygen; if you put a lid on the meat (or even a cover to prevent splattering, as I have in the past), you'll wreck the flavor. It turns out that preserving the integrity of your freshly-cleaned cooktop must be secondary to preserving the flavor of your meal. Again, who knew?
- Really great chefs will tell you that you can tell when the meat is done by the feel of it when you push with your finger. Don't believe it; they are full of it when it comes to this strategy. Use an instant read thermometer to judge when to remove them from the pan, bearing in mind that you'll tent them with foil and the chops will continue to cook after you remove them from the pan. 125 degrees for medium rare.
- Remove the chops to a shallow dish and tent with foil, or put them on a warm-hold oven. (What the hell is a warm-hold oven, you may ask? It's an oven... that is slightly warm.... for holding things that are already cooked. Ah. Right.)
- Once the meat is out of the pan, drain the remaining juices out of the pan. The brown bits leftover from the carmelization process should still be there - don't scrape the pan. I'm always tempted to leave lots of the juice in there, but you shouldn't - it'll just dilute the flavor further and affect the consistency of the sauce.
- Return the pan to medium-low heat. Add the shallots and garlic and cook for just 60 seconds or so. You don't want them to crisp and blacken, as this will create a bitter taste.
- Pull the pan off the heat; add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of red wine, one sprig of rosemary and one/two sprigs of thyme. Return the pan to high heat and bring to a boil.
- Reduce the sauce until you have about 2-4 T of sauce (for 3-4 people) ; it's a look more than a quantity. Reduction concentrates the flavor of the wine and herbs. The mistake I always make is to under-reduce; I'm always afraid that there won't be enough sauce in the end, that somehow if I erase all that liquid there won't be enough flavor. But really, I'm just producing a diluted sauce - it's critical to reduce it adequately.
- Add approximately 1/2-3/4 cup of beef broth. I always substitute chicken broth and, evidently, this is a big no-no.
- Stir with a wire whisk, making sure that you scrape up all of the brown bits from the bottom and corners of the pan. Bonus: makes the pan easier to clean! This sort of atones for the damage done to your cooktop in the earlier steps.
- Finally, the finishing touch: Add three tablespoons of butter, one tablespoon at a time, swirling it into the sauce with your whisk. Reduce the heat to medium if need be to ensure that the butter remains unseparated as it melts; you don't want the butter to separate in high heat over a long time or it will ruin the consistency of the sauce. The critical thing here is to achieve the right ratio of butter to fat; it's hard to quantify, but the sauce should look... right. This is one of those nebulous "chef" phrases that really kills the novice like me, but I think I've got it after watching this process. Add in any juices that have emerged from the meat as it has been tented.
- Chop up some rosemary and tarragon (actually, do this earlier so it's all ready).
- Plate the meat. Sauce the meat. EAT THE MEAT.
We ate it with haricots vert, salted with butter, and rice pilaf cooked with a sprig of tarragon and a big ol' bay leaf in it. It was, as we say in New Hampshire, wicked good. Wait, I think that descriptor was supposed to go with the maple-sap hot dog entry....
