Behind the French Menu: Steak Tartar

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tedehur/2545954796/sizes/s/ ff

Where Tabasco Sauce comes from and who created the sauce.

My misconceptions on the origins of Tabasco sauce were corrected by a chance meeting in Switzerland some 15 years ago. There I met a well-informed and interesting gentleman who had spent many years working for the European distributor of Tabasco and the truth was out. Tabasco is neither Mexican, Spanish, French nor Swiss. Tabasco is 100% American.

Tabasco

Tabasco is used to spice up many dishes in cuisines around the world, and that includes French Cuisine; in France, the perfect Steak Tartar includes Tabasco. Tabasco is also the heart of the perfect Bloody Mary cocktail in France or anywhere else in the world for that matter.

Since 1868 when the sauce was patented, it has been made on Avery Island, in the State of Louisiana, USA. Behind every great sauce is a lover of good food. The creator of Tabasco was no less; he was Edmund McIlhenny, a banker in New Orleans. Upon marrying Mary Eliza Avery, the happy couple moved to his wife’s family owned “Avery Island” more than 100 miles away on the Louisiana coast;

Tabasco Spicy Chocolate.

Photograph courtesy of Yoichiro Akiyama

https://www.flickr.com/photos/karitsu/14407580548/sizes/m/ FF

Here Edmund began his experiments both as a gardener and a lover of good food. Then he became interested in making a sauce from his red peppers. Today when you look at your bottle of Tabasco sauce, whether in France, Japan, or the USA, every bottle will still show “McIlhenny Company, Pepper sauce. TABASCO®, Made in U.S.A. Avery Island, LA”, it is made nowhere else. They did try that once, but that experiment was short-lived

Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce

Photograph courtesy of Kelly Nighan

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sixelsid/7998532290/sizes/m/ FF

In 2009 McIlhenny became one of the few U.S. companies to have received a royal warrant of appointment that certifies the company as a supplier to Queen Elizabeth II of the UK. The warrant held is: "Supplier of Tabasco Sauce HM The Queen" .

Originally all peppers used in Tabasco sauce were grown on Avery Island; however, the homegrown peppers are no longer enough to meet demand. Today the peppers used to produce Tabasco are grown in Central and South America from seed stock that is grown on Avery Island. The Peppers are ground into a mash and placed along with salt and the other ingredients including vinegar in white oak barrels. These barrels are mostly re-used barrels that previously held Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey.

After aging for up to three years and a final tasting Tabasco is bottled as a finished sauce. Even the salt used in Tabasco production comes from an Avery Island salt mine.

Chipotle and Buffalo Tabasco.

Photograph courtesy of ND Strupler

https://www.flickr.com/photos/strupler/8265081138/sizes/m/ FF

From the original red sauce, the Tabasco brand has grown and now includes a wide range of sauces including some that are blended with other peppers. Only the Jalapeño-based green sauce has no Tabasco peppers at all and from among all the sauces only the original red Tabasco has the full three-year aging process.

Bloody Mary

Photograph courtesy of fishermansdaughter

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fishermansdaughter/6337893322/sizes/m/ FF

McIlhenny Company also permits other brands to use and advertise Tabasco sauce as an ingredient in their products. The sauce is labeled in 22 languages and dialects, and prepared for shipment to over 180 countries and territories around the world.

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

from
Behind the French Menu
By
Bryan G. Newman

Steak Tartare -Bœuf Tartare

Steak Tartare, Bœuf Tartare- The steak in the manner of the Tartars, the famous and frightening fighters who rode to war under the direction of Genghis Khan beginning in the 13th century. Steak Tartar begins with uncooked ground or chopped beef. Despite the lack of a frying pan or grill, in France, this may be one of the greatest steak dishes that you have ever tasted. Steak Tartar is spiced beef made with steak.

Twentieth-century folklore has the Tartar tribesmen riding to war with raw meat under their horses' saddles. As they rode, the beef was tenderized and the riders were said to cut off pieces of the raw meat with a knife; they only stopped riding to sleep. Despite the name, Steak Tartar (Tartare) is far from any real Tartar culinary traditions.

Who were the Tartars

The Tartars became famous when the Mongols, in the 13th century, led by Genghis Khan had made the Tartars part of his army. Later the sons and grandsons of Genghis Khan would lead the Mongol invasions with the most feared fighters being the Tartars. At its height, these “hordes” ruled parts of Eastern Europe, all of Bulgaria, and large parts of Siberia. The Tartars were finally defeated by Russia in the 16^th century and their leaders who agreed to become Orthodox Christians became part of the Russian aristocracy.

Steak Tartar begins with uncooked ground or chopped beef. Despite the lack of a frying pan or grill, in France, this may be one of the greatest steak dishes that you have ever tasted. Steak Tartar is spiced beef made with steak.

Good Restaurant Theater

For those who enjoy good restaurant theater, some make an enjoyable show of mixing the tartare’s ingredients in front of the diners as there is no cooking involved. The French Steak Tartare is a spicy dish, but then for most UK and North American visitors, nothing in France is very spicy. You may request more or less Tabasco or Worcester sauce.

Your French menu may offer you:

Tartare de Boeuf (180g) et ses Condiments avec Frites Fraîches « Maison » et Salade - Beef Tartar (180g (6.5 oz)) with condiments. Served with fresh the restaurant’s special “homemade" French fries and salad.

The condiments for a steak tartar: While they vary with the chef they often include; shallots, capers, cornichons

Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, parsley, chives. An egg yolk (often served on top of the tartar), salt and freshly ground black pepper

Steak Tartare, Frites, Salade – Steak Tartar served with French fries and a small green salad.

Steak Tartare Bœuf Fin Gras du Mézenc Coupé au Couteau, Salade Verte et Pommes Sautées, – Steak Tartar, chopped with a knife, from the Bœuf Fin Gras du Mézenc AOC/AOP, one of France’s finest beef cattle. The steak is accompanied by a green salad and sautéed potatoes.

Steak Tartare
As eaten for breakfast by Sigmund Freud
According to the Blog: (From Jewish Viennese Food. Sigmund Freud was eating steak tartare for breakfast every day, a fact which his cook and long-time servant, Paula Fichtl, recorded in her diaries. (She was in the service of the Freud family from 1929 until the death of Anna Freud in 1982.)
Photograph and story courtesy of Jewish Viennese Food

Steak Tartare Servi Cru ou Juste Saisi - Steak Tartar prepared traditionally, uncooked, or very lightly fried.

Steak Tartare is traditionally served raw, but some diners, including many in France, prefer it juste saisi, or very lightly seared, while not wanting a hamburger, they do not want the meat completely raw. You'll find many restaurants offer this variation, sometimes even if it's not explicitly on the menu.

Juste Saisi : meaning just ready or lightly seared; a very important cooking term for meat, fish, seafood, and other products that must never be overcooked, or hardly cooked at all, to preserve their delicate texture and flavor.

Boeuf Tartare aux Couteaux – Steak Tartar sliced with a knife. While it may seem obvious that a steak Tartar will be sliced, a medium to lower-priced restaurant may want to make it clear that their Tartare is not simply ground beef. Part of a great Tartare is the texture, and hand-cutting provides the best.

Tartare de Cheval - A horse meat Tartar. Horse meat has always had its devotees who enjoy its slightly sweeter meat, and that is true of other European countries, with Italy leading; other countries where horse meat is popular include Spain, Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland. Horse meat is controlled in France, and animals from racing, etc, will not enter the food chain. In an area where horsemeat is popular, you may see a Boucherie Chevaline or a Boucherie Hippophagique, a horsemeat butcher.

N.B. Don't confuse steak à cheval with Tartare de Cheval; they are entirely different dishes. A Steak à Cheval is a beef steak topped with a fried or poached egg.

Tartare de Cheval
A horse meat Tartare
Photograph courtesy of Trip Advisor.

Ordering a Steak Tartare with an English or a North American accent.

From my experience, if you're an English-speaking visitor ordering Steak Tartare in a French restaurant, be ready for a moment of clarification from your server. On more than one occasion, I've had a server—and even the maître d'—kindly but firmly double-check if I understood that the dish is not cooked.

I asked why they were so concerned with my choice. It turned out that in this establishment, somewhat on the fringes of the usual tourist routes, there have been overseas guests who ordered this dish without any idea of what steak tartar was. They had to have their steak tartar cooked and ended up with a hamburger minus the buns.

Steak Tartare at an Apéro – An invitation to a drink, an apéritif, but not a dinner invitation. An Apéro is a social gathering with light snacks. An invitation is typically verbal, with a set time, and it's polite to arrive no more than ten minutes late. Crisps, nuts, bite-sized sausages or open sandwiches that may include Steak Tartare. An apéro will usually be over within an hour

Steak Tartare open sandwiches,
Photograph courtesy of Raj Taneja at Flickr.

The history of uncooked (raw) meat dishes goes back thousands of years, but for restaurant menus and recipe books its about 125 years.

The earliest printed recipe for an uncooked meat dish that I've found is from Georges Auguste Escoffier’s 1903 Le Guide Culinaire. The recipe, called Beefsteak à l'Américaine (Steak in the American manner), is very similar to today's Steak Tartare, including capers, onions, parsley, and a raw egg yolk on top.

To be clear, the name Beefsteak à l’Américaine doesn't actually mean the recipe is American. In the 19th century, it was common practice in French cuisine to name new dishes and sauces after countries simply because it sounded exotic or appealing. That explains names like Sauce Hollandaise and Sauce Espagnole. By the 1930s, however, menus began listing the dish as Steak Tartare or Bœuf Tartare, and so ownership of the dish was moved from the Americans to the Tartars.

The recipe for Beefsteak à l’Américaine is on page 615.
Photograph courtesy of Gallica
The dish appeared as Steak Tartare in the 1938 edition
of Prosper Montagnes’ Larousse Gastronomique on page 134

Chopped veal and beef dishes elsewhere have been influenced by the French Beefsteak à l'Américaine or the Italian dish Carne Cruda alla Piemontese, from the Piedmonte region in Italy as Alba. Many countries had spiced chopped meat dishes and while the names may have changes Poland also lays claim to Steak Tartar with Befsztyk Tatarski.

The recipes for Tartare spread to fish, seafood, fruit and vegetables.

Tartare de Saumon Épicé – Spicy Salmon Tartar. Unlike Steak Tartare, there is no agreed recipe covering this dish; however, most recipes use spicy sesame oil made from roasted sesame seed, uncooked tomatoes, cornichons for the crunch, and onions. Some recipes add ginger, and others Worcester sauce or Tabasco.

Tartare de Thon Rouge - Tuna Tartar. Both French and French-Japanese restaurants offer this dish. I have enjoyed more than one version, including an excellent Temaki Tuna Tartare very similar to the picture below.

Temaki de Tartare de Thon au Jambon Cru et aux Tomates
A tuna temaki with cured ham and tomatoes
Photograph and recipe Atelier Des Chefs.

Vegetable Tartare – Vegetarian and vegan Tartar dishes may also be on the menu. The recipes include crunchy fresh vegetables such as cauliflower, cabbage, beetroot and possibly radishes or fresh horseradish for spice. Holding the vegetables together will be a flavored mayonnaise, and in France, cornichons will be there for their taste and crunch. In France, the mayonnaise will nearly always be freshly made.

Vegetable Tartar
Photograph courtesy of Trip Advisor.

Your menu may also offer dessert Tartars:

Fruit tartar, red fruit coulis, mascarpone

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