Here is one we've been meaning to try for some time now. What scared me about this recipe was the rosti. I stink at making them. It all goes back to the day I proposed to Laurie (so I blame her). Here's the story of the 'best rosti I've ever had'...
Laurie visited me on a business trip in London, and since it was around the time of her birthday, I surprised her (at Jamie Olivers 'Fifteen' restaurant) with train tickets to Paris for the weekend.
It was her first time in Europe to begin with. She was super excited that I surprised her with a weekend in Paris as her birthday gift. Little did she know I had a ring in my pocket to propose. We get to Paris and the plan was that on the next morning, we'd do the Eiffel tower, and I'd propose at the top. Cheesy, now that I think about it. However, as we get to the tower, we see the crazy long line/wait! Problem: I had booked a photographer to do a little photoshoot post popping the question, and there would be no way possible that I'd make it to the meeting spot on time if I waited in that line. Uh-oh. Palms sweaty, we walked around for a bit. The time was ticking. We were crossing over the Seine on the Pont Alexandre III bridge, which is beautiful, and I'm practically shaking. An American tourist couple, saw that we were American and asked if we could take their picture on the bridge. I said sure, no problem as long as you take ours! I took their picture and then handed them my camera, told them how to press the button and said something like 'you sure you got it? this one's going to be important' while they looked at this nervous guy all funny. Then I got down on one knee and popped the question.
...and there was some disbelief...
...then some...'are you crazy!!'
and then we were 'engaged'!
Don't worry I'm getting to the 'best rosti I've ever had' part. -- So. We then went to lunch at a recommended place, Le Coupe Chou. It wasn't a michelin starred place or anything like that, but a good friend recommended it and it turned out to be perfect. Solid french food, in a quiet, nice, romantic atmosphere. I orded the duck, her the beef. It had been the first time I had been served tourneed carrots (albeit poorly)...I knew I was in Paris!
The side was a potato rosti...which I do not have a picture of, BUT, it was 'the best potato rosti I've ever had!'.
I came home and immediately tried to replicate this dish without success. Here is a link to cheftalk.com regarding my trials and tribulations with a bunch of pictures and an eventual partial success....I won't scare you, but this was my first attempt in 2008.
yeaaah....SO, needless to say I was nervous about getting this one. The filet poaching, no problem. The recipe is pretty straight-forward. The filet is simply poached in wine with some spices. For the rosti - first you cook some carrots, mushrooms, and shallot, with a few other spices and some sherry. Then, you use that mixture in the potato rosti...hence Potato-Mushroom Rosti
Here are some pictures prepping rosti...
Look at that brunoise. Perfect.
I don't recommend this OXO mandoline. It has a horizontal cutting blade that isn't very good. My next one will be a slanted blade commercial grade. When I need to mandoline sometime, I usually use my cheap 5$ mandoline and it does a better job, but doesn't have the fine julienne blade.
Then I prepped the filets. This was the easy part.
Now, the fun begins. I have to actually make the rosti! We purchased this new HD handheld video camera to use while trail running and I figured video would be better than photos for this one! So, here are a series of 3 videos that walk you through our process.
As 'not good' as that last video looked (Laurie, glass half empty)...due to use having some sticking problems...this was actually the best potato rosti I've ever made. It turned out in the end to be really good! Here is a photo.
And here is a final shot...to match the book.
Thoughts: Great dish! Easy recipe. I'll definitely make it again, and aside from the rosti this is an easy one to make for guests. While I do get the poaching of the filet, you still can't beat a sear on a piece of meat, and I missed that a little bit in this dish. I kept thinking...'should I sear it off first?' but then it would poach too fast and not get enough wine flavor, etc...so I just stuck to the recipe. One thing the recipe called for that I didn't mention up above was the veal sauce from the back of the cookbook. I didn't have any stock on hand, so just simple used a little bit of the poaching liquid as a sauce and it worked out great. The wine we used to poach was a 2006 Falernia Syrah from Chili.
The wine we drank was an Australian Shiraz called Mothers Milk. Lately we've been into these whacky-named Australian Shiraz's. The Molly Dookers and the like. They are reasonably priced and some of them are really really good, however, the gamble is some are really really bad. This one happens to be great and at 20$ a bottle, it's a steal.