from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
Macreuse
de Bœuf.
Photograph
courtesy of Gemini
The steak, called a Macreuse à bifteck in French supermarkets will be Macreuse de Bœuf on most French menu listings and has no generally accepted English translation. This steak is flavorful and tasty but don’t order it well done; it’s best rare to medium rare (à point). Ordering a macreuse de bœuf well done will bring you a piece of leather. If you want a good well-done steak order an entrecôte, which will be more expensive but still edible when well done. There is no similar cut to a macreuse de bœuf on USA or UK menus, although it is available in the French-speaking part of Canada.
The macreuse à bifteck comes from the same area as the US and UK chuck, the shoulder, but the French cut the chuck very differently. Instead of cutting the chuck across and combining the different tastes and textures as a whole, the French cut each muscle separately, and the macreuse à biftek provides a steak with a bigger bang for the buck. In French cooking schools’ fully qualified chefs have to learn nearly as much about the cuts of beef as a butcher to graduate, and in restaurants the French diners are knowledgeable; they expect flavorful cuts at reasonable prices and this steak fits the bill.
N.B. There
are two macreuse cuts.
But only one is the macreuse à bifteck
From talking to butchers in the USA, I learned that better cuts from the chuck are available. They include the chuck tender steak, the shoulder petite tender and the chuck eye steak, and the flat-iron steak. However, none of my sources could offer me an English name for the French macreus à bifteck.
If you are staying in
an Airbnb in France and want to cook this tasty steak while your in France, read the description
carefully in the supermarket or butchers. There is a second muscle called
a macreuse à pot-au-feu, (seen in the diagram above), and that is a cut for
stewing.
Macreuse a Bifteck on French menus:
Macreuse
de Bœuf, à l'Echalote et Poivre Vert -
A macreuse
à biftek pepper steak prepared
with shallots and green pepper. Controlling the taste of a
dish with black pepper is not easy, so when French chefs prepare a pepper
steak, many prefer green pepper, which allows a controllable heat.
Grilling
Macreuse de Bœuf.
Photograph
courtesy of Gemini
Macreuse de Bœuf Cuite
6h, Bacon
de Sanglier des
Bois et Champignons Sauvages -
A macreuse à biftek steak slowly cooked for six hours and prepared with
bacon from a wild boar from the woods and served with wild mushrooms. A steak
like this will have been seared on the outside and the allowed to cook at a low
temperature for over six hours; the result will be a steak with all the flavor
locked in and a texture that will almost melt in your mouth.
Sanglier - France farm-raises wild boar that is available all year round but this menu listing tells the diner that this is wild boar from the woods and real wild boar have a much stronger flavor than their farm-raised cousins and wild boar’s bacon is very different. Real wild boar are only available in the hunting season; thought that season last seven months and as their populations are growing they are considered a pest.
Unfortunately, wild boars do not just stay in the woods and forests that cover over 25% of the mainland. At night the wild boar wander out, and in addition to eating the crops in the fields they also tear the grapes from vines and eat them. This is France abd you can't expect the French to be happy if someone is consuming the source of their wines.
The hunting season for real
wild boar begins in June in most
areas.]Apart from causing damage to farmers they
cause over 30,000 car accidents every year, including over 20 fatalities.
To ensure consumers about the safety of safety genuine wild boar meat
every animal must have its meat tested in a government approved laboratory
before it can be served in a restaurant or home. The steak dish above, with its wild boar
bacon and wild mushrooms, will be make a memorable dish.
Champignons Sauvages - France has wonderful wild and cultivated
mushrooms. Every wild mushroom has its season and the menu listing above may be
on the menu for six or seven months a year with the wild mushrooms changing
every three to four weeks as the season changes. It’s worthwhile asking about the wild
mushrooms on the menu, as you may enjoy mushrooms rarely
seen at home. Three of the most popular wild mushrooms are:
The Bolet– The Weeping
Bolet Mushroom. From
the end of April through September, the Weeping Bolet mushrooms are so
bountiful they will be in nearly every French market and supermarket and on
many menus.
The Cèpe - The French Porcini Mushroom. The cèpe or penny bun is found in France’s many pine forests and between early August and mid October will be on many menus. menus.
Chanterelle Girolle - The Chanterelle Mushrooms. The chanterelle mushroom family has a long season (depending on the weather) from July through October.
Wild boar
crossing sign
Be careful when driving in the French countryside.
Macreuse de Bœuf, Légumes Racines Confits – A macreuse de bœuf, steak accompanied by root vegetables that have been slowly cooked with a slightly sweetened wine or balsamic vinegar.
Root vegetables- In North America and the UK, root vegetables are often overlooked or consigned to soups with only the celebrity chefs taking them out of the heirloom vegetable cupboard. In France from the smallest restaurant to the bistros and brassieres to three-star Michelin Guide restaurants parsnips, (panais), turnips (navets), and swedes (chou-navets or rutabaga) will be on many menus, these are tasty vegetables and a welcome change to the ubiquitous peas, green beans, and carrots.
Macreuse de Bœuf Sauce au Poivre et Whisky, Salade Composée, Vinaigrette au Cidre et Frites – A macreuse de bœuf,steak prepared in a pepper and whisky sauce served with a salad with a cider vinaigrette and French fries.
Whisky - Scotland, Canada and Japan produce whisky spelled without the ‘e,' but so does France. So if you are a whisky maven ask for more information on this menu listing.
Macreuse de Bœuf, Sauce Béarnaise Purée
de Panais et
Legumes Grillé – A macreuse de bœuf, served with Sauce Béarnaise accompanied by pureed parsnips and grilled vegetables. Sauce Béarnaise has been topping France and the world's sauce popularity polls for nearly two-hundred years. It is one of the few sauces that may be served with steaks and roasts as well as salmon and vegetables whether cold or hot.
Sauce Bearnaise: In 1830 the chef Louis Françoise-Collinet took the recipe for Sauce Hollandaise, omitted the lemon juice and added white wine vinegar, shallots, and the herbs chervil (cerfeuil) and tarragon (estragon) and created Sauce Béarnaise. It's the tarragon and white wine vinegar that supplies the tang that creates Sauce Béarnaise devotees. The name Béarnaise may seem to indicate that the sauce comes from the old province of Béarn, once part of the independent kingdom of Navarre that straddled the Pyrenees and had one border in Spain and the other in France. While Navarre had many recipes of its own none were related to Sauce Béarnaise. Nevertheless, when the chef Collinet named the sauce, he did have Béarn and Navarre on his mind. His restaurant near Paris was called The Pavillon Henry IV, and Henry IV of France, was, before assuming that title, had been Henry III of Navarre and Prince of the Principality of Béarn in Navarre. When Henry became King of France he brought Navarre into France.
Steak Tatare is
often made with the macreuse à biftek
Photograph
courtesy of Hotel du Vin & Bistro
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hdv-gallery/7138285281/
Macreuse
Be careful when looking up macreuse in a French-English dictionary.
Most dictionaries translate macreuse as the scooter sea duck. Members of the scooter duck family may be hunted one month a year, though its vary rare to see one on a restaurant menu.
In 1870 Alexander Dumas (père) the author of the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo and four hundred other works published his over one-thousand-page Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, his grand dictionary of cuisine. (Dumas had a second life as a well known gourmand and amateur cook apart from his writing). You can his read dictionary, more a book or recipe and food stories, on line or download (at a very low cost) the original at the French National Library (BnF). (I have seen an out-of-print English language selection from Dumas’s dictionary available second-hand on Amazon: Dumas on Food: by Alan and Jane Davison).
Scoter
(macreuse) ducks.
Scoters are sea ducks but they are also found in freshwater lakes and rivers close to the sea.
Photograph
courtesy of Jean-Marie Van der Maren
www.flickr.com/photos/jmvdmaren/10316987185/
If you living in France and want to prepare this tasty steak read the description in the supermarket or at the butchers carefully. There is a second cut called a macreuse à pot-au-feu which as its name describes is for stewing. A traditional pot-au-feu includes beef, marrow bones (á la moelle ), carrots (carottes). turnips (navets), leeks (poireaux), celery (céleri), onions (oignons), potatoes and herbs. One of the cuts of beef in a pot-au-feu will always be the macreuse à pot-au- feu. Pot-a-feus may be on menus as Baeckeoffes, Garbures and other local names where the ingredients are often pork with beef added as an afterthought.
If you have a butcher that not only sells pre-packaged beef, ask what other cuts, they offer from the whole chuck, and not just the all-inclusive chuck steak. Who knows, you may have found someone who knows how to cut good and inexpensive steaks from the chuck.
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Behind the French Menu
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behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
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