Onglet Gascon

Tonight I made Onglet Gascon for dinner. If you have Anthony Bourdain's "Les Halles" Cookbook: Classic Bistro Cooking, the recipe is on pages 127 - 128 (Hardcover).

This recipe calls for bone marrow, one of God's great gifts to serious eaters. The easiest strategy here is to ask your butcher to put a nice fat leg bone of veal on a bandsaw and saw you off four 2- to 3-inch/5- 8-cm pieces. When you get home, soak the bones in cold water for a while and then, using your thumb, push the marrow through and out the other side of the bone. Hold in ice water until ready to use.

INGREDIENTS:

- 4 6 oz onglet steaks
- salt and freshly cracked peppercorns
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 2 tablespoons butter
- marrow from 4 beef bones
- 2 ounces white wine
- 1/2 cup strong, dark veal stock, (nice to have a little demi-glace here, too)
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- course sea salt
- 2 sprigs flat leaf parsley, chopped


METHOD:

COOK THE STEAK AND THE MARROW

Preheat the oven to 375ºF/190ºC. Season the steaks with salt and pepper. Put the oil in the sauté pan and heat over high heat. When hot, add 1 tablespoon/14 g of the butter. When it has foamed and subsided, add the steaks, working in batches, as you don't want to overcrowd (and hence cool down)the pan. Using the tongs, turn the steaks, cooking about 2 minutes on each side. Put the pan aside without washing it.

Transfer the steaks to the small roasting pan and add the bone marrow. Place in the oven and cook for 5 minutes (maybe 8 for medium rare). Remove the meat from the pan, but leave in the marrow for seven additional minutes, until it is cooked through - meaning no pink, white, or red color remains. Place the steaks on the plate to rest.

THE SAUCE

Return the sauté pan to the heat and stir in the wine with the wooden spoon. You know this by now, right? Or did you just jump to this recipe? Okay. Fine. Make sure to scrape up the nice brown stuff with the spoon as you deglaze with the wine. Reduce the wine by half. stir in your stock (and now's the time to sneak in a little of our demi-glace stash). Reduce by half. Got any juices leaking out of your resting meat? I'll bet you do. Put that in the sauce, too. Whisk in the remaining butter (that's called monter au beurre if you wanted to know) and remove from heat. Off the heat, whisk in the mustard and adjust the seasonings.

SERVE

Arrange the meat on the platter with the marrow around it. Spoon the mustard sauce over the steaks. Sprinkle the sea salt over the marrow. Sprinkle the parsley over everything.