Bœuf Fin Gras du Mézenc AOP. The Finest Beef in France and Only on French Menus Between February and Early June.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

    

Finely marbled beef.

Photograph courtesy of Alpha

www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/4450266254/

   

The Fin Gras du Mézenc cattle are raised on the Mézenc Massif that runs through the departments of Ardèche and Haute-Loire in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in France’s mountainous Massif Central. Here, the pastures are over 1,100 meters high and the rich grasses, upon which the cattle graze for over six months a year, include over forty different herbs and mountain flowers.

These AOP cattle have finely marbled beef and will only be on the menu between February and early June. The cognoscenti watch specific restaurants that every year will have this beef on their menus with their calendars in hand. Even in Paris and Lyon, France’s two capitals of fine-dining, relatively few French diners have the opportunity to taste this remarkable beef. Less than 800 head of cattle reach the market every year, and France has a population of over 65,000,000.

   

This beef makes excellent steaks, but the real flavor and texture of this beef is best tasted in a Carpaccio or a Fin Gras du Mézenc Steak Tartar, as well as in stews and roasts. The steaks will be excellent, but the unique taste of beef from the Fin Gras du Mézenc is best appreciated when its taste and texture may be noted without grill or frying flavors.

   

Hikers with a farmer and his calf in Mézenc

Photograph courtesy of Peter Lorre.

www.flickr.com/photos/weddingwithedouard/1073177953/

  

On a few select menus between February and early June:

     

Belles Tranches de Bœuf AOC Fin Gras du Mézenc Justes Marinées et Condiments d’une Béarnaise – Beautiful slices of Fin Gras du Mézenc AOC beef lightly marinated  and served with a Sauce Béarnaise. This dish is a Fin Gras du Mézenc take on a Carpaccio.

    

Pièce de Bœuf Fin Gras du Mézenc Rôti à la Plancha et Purée aux Cèpes – A rump steak, fried-grilled on a plancha accompanied by mashed potatoes with porcini mushrooms.

A Pièce de Bœuf might seem to translate as a Piece of Beef which doesn’t inspire, but there are four unique French cuts from the rump  that may be called a Pièce de Bœuf; cuts that are the very best but usually considered too much work and preparation for the UK and North American butchers.

A plancha, which was initially a Basque cooking tool, is a solid, thick, flat sheet, that achieves a taste somewhere between grilling and frying. The Basques claim ownership of the plancha, as do the Spanish. The modern plancha may look like the flat cooking plate of a fast-food restaurant, but look again carefully, it has three times the thickness and produces a very even heat.

         

Bourguignon de Boeuf  "Fin Gras du Mézenc" AOP - A beef Bourguignonne made with the beef from the Fin Gras du Mézenc AOC. Bœuf Bourguignonne is the most famous beef stew of Burgundy and the beef from Fin Gras du Mézenc is especially noted for the taste given to these types of dishes. In this dish, the chef is matching burgundy red wine with the Fin Gras du Mézenc. 

  

Bœuf Bourguignonne

Photograph courtesy of Jeremy Keith

www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/16627591978/

 

Tartare Fin Gras du Mézenc de en Rouleau, Croquette de Joues et Queues de Bœuf au Sésame – A steak tartar from the Fin Gras du Mézenc rolled and served alongside fried croquets made using the meat from the beef cheeks and tail flavored with sesame.

          

Steak Tartar

Photograph courtesy of NwongPR

www.flickr.com/photos/nwongpr/6999679796/

    

Côte de Boeuf de Fin Gras du Mézenc, Simplement Poêlée, Jus Corsé à la Syrah (pour deux personnes) - A bone-in beef rib simply fried in a jus corsé, the natural cooking juices, flavored with a Syrah red wine. A jus corsé is made with the natural cooking juices and here the Syrah red wine flavors this sauce. Syrah is best known outside France as Shiraz. This serving is for a minimum of two diners as a beef rib is a very large portion.

Here in the Mézenc Massif that one may begin to understand the importance of the French concept of Terroir.  Terroir indicates a single location where land and climate combine to provide consistently superior and unique food products, wines, and as in this case, the finest beef. Here, the contribution of nurture combined with nature clearly shows the difference as the other French AOP cattle are specific breeds, and the Fin Gras du Mézenc is not. They are mixed herds, and their taste can only be down to Terroir.

        

Before being taken to market, these animals must have passed two summers freely grazing on the Mézenc Massif above 1,100 meters. When they are brought down for the winter, they may only be fed hay that was grown in the same pastures where they grazed in the summer. Also permitted in winter are limited amounts of cereal and other naturally grown products

    

Mont Mézenc, 1754 meters

and  La Grosse Roche, Haute-Loire.

Photograph courtesy of Olive Titus

www.flickr.com/photos/96064256@N04/35865172485/

     

The cattle are only sent to market from February through June, and that means that the youngest animals go to market at 24 months, while most are over 30 months. As with all AOC cattle, they must be raised free of antibiotics and growth hormones and the calves raised by their mothers.

How do you know the beef really is the Fin Gras du Mézenc?

 

The Fin Gras du Mézenc AOP also has traceability, which prevents other cattle from being sold under this valuable name. All animals raised for sale will have a piece of cartilage taken from their ears, and that allows a DNA test to made at any time in the marketing of the beef.  Now high tech tests can connect the meat on your plate to the farmer who raised the beef.

      

The Mézenc Massif set with France’s mountainous Massif Central is very sparsely populated; for the visitor, this area offers a view of a distinctly different France well away from the crowds.  Even in the winter, when the Massif has cross-country and some downhill skiing, those who visit are the sports lovers who want to get away from the crowds in the most popular skiing areas. In the summer, here is rock climbing, hiking, fishing, and mountain biking.

    

Winter in the Mézenc Massif

Photograph courtesy of Gabriel De Siam

www.flickr.com/photos/gcardaire/39972710994/

The Fête du Fin Gras du Mézenc

The first weekend of June is the Fête du Fin Gras du Mézenc AOP, the feast of the Fin Gras du Mézenc AOC.  Then during the fete, the villages grow from a few hundred inhabitants to 4,000 and more. All the visitors will have come to watch parades of the cattle along with sales of other farm-made products that include local cheeses, conserves, honey, and more. Then, of course, the festive dinners based on the Fin Gras du Mézenc AOC are the main attractions.  The villages in the départements of Ardèche and Haute-Loire alternately divide the responsibilities for the fete. 

Farmer with a young bull he is bringing to the fete.

Photograph courtesy of the Maison du Fin Gras du Mézenc

 The French government tourist office will have the names of the villages hosting next year’s fete as will the website of the Fin Gras du Mézenc AOC beef.  The website is in French but easily understood using the Bing,  Google, and other translate apps

.http://www.aoc-fin-gras-du-mezenc.com/

    

Parade in the Fête du Fin Gras du Mézenc

Photograph courtesy of the Maison du  Fin Gras du Mézenc

Alpine fennel

      

if you are in the area of the small village of Chaudeyrolles at any time of the year, in the Haute-Loire, visit their Maison du  Fin Gras du Mézenc AOP;  their information center for this fine cattle. Here, they will tell you all about their cattle, emphasizing their traditional methods of farming, show videos, and also offer recipes; the information center also sell jars of Sel de Cistre, a salt made from the plant called the Cerfeuil des Alpes or Fenouil de Montane, Alpine fennel. This wild herb, according to the locals, adds tremendous flavor to any steak.

     

Alpine Fennel

Photograph courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library

    

Cerfeuil des Alpes, Cittern, Fenouil de Montagne or Fenouil de Alpe -  Alpine fennel or baldmoney  in the languages of France’s neighbors:

(Catalan – fonoll),  (German - bärwurz), (Italian -   finocchiella or finocchio montano), (Spanish  - eneldo ursino). (Latin - meum athamanticum).

--------------------------------

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

 

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

Copyright 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019

 

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Sauce Bercy, the Classic Sauce for Fish; Sauce Bercy for Meat Dishes and Beurre Bercy for Steaks and Roasts.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

Sauce Bercy for fish.
Photograph courtesy of the Magic Skillet. 

There are three different Bercy sauces.
Two have the same name.
Sauce Bercy……for fish
Sauce Bercy …….for meat
The third is Beurre Bercy
(More a condiment than a sauce, Beurre Bercy is a wine flavored compound butter served on steaks and roasts).
 
Bercy the village

Bercy's first known mention was on an 11th century a map; then it was a small village on the River Seine, outside the walls of Paris. By the 17th century, Bercy had grown and had become Paris's primary wine market with its streets named after renowned French wines. Apart from bringing in wines for Paris from the Bordeaux region and the North of France, Bercy exported French wine all over the world. With that history, it is not surprising that wine is the base of all three Bercy sauces; however, what is surprising is that all three use white wine. 

Wine in the cellars of Château La Rose Brisson. Saint Emilion.
Saint Emilion wines are one of the Bordeaux wines first graded in the 1860s.
They would have been sold to Paris via the Bercy wine market.
Photograph courtesy of www twin-loc fr
www.flickr.com/photos/xavier33300/14122281493/

Bercy supplies wine to all of France.

Bercy supplied Paris with wines, Cognac, oil, and lumber from the Atlantic coast to the west, Burgundy to the East, and the Rhine to the North. Then from 1681 also from the Mediterranean via the Canal des Deux Mers. The River Oise linked Paris to the North and onto Belgium and Holland. From the mid-1800s, there was also a Marne canal that connected Paris to the East and onto the Rhine. By 1829 Port Bercy was the largest wine market in the world.

When Bercy's wine market was in full swing, it was also a tax-free zone, outside of Paris. Parisians would head out to Bercy and its beautiful gardens for a night of inexpensive entertainment and drinking. Only when you brought wine into Paris did you pay tax unless your business was sneaking the barrels over the walls.

Soles Sauce Bercy
Photograph courtesy of Grelinette et Cassolettes.

The first Sauce Bercy, was created for fish dishes. We have no records of the sauce's original creator; the name was simply the French wine dealers' place of business and began with a local following. The second Sauce Bercy was a response to the original sauce's popularity and the demand for a similar sauce for meat dishes. The third sauce is Sauce Beurre Bercy and is more accurately called Beurre Bercy. Beurre Bercy is a cold, thick butter, a condiment placed on steaks or slices from roasts as they are served, becoming a sauce as it melts.

Sauce Bercy for fish 

Sauce Bercy for fish is white wine sauce made with butter, shallots, parsley, fish stock, a light touch of garlic, salt, and pepper, sometimes thyme is added. The original recipe for Sauce Bercy used Sauce Bechamel to thicken the sauce.  

Sauce Bercy on fish menus:
  

Filet de Flétan Sauce Bercy – Halibut, served with the fish Sauce Bercy. Halibut is always served as a filet, as it is the largest of all flounders, flatfish. Most halibuts weigh over 10 kilos, and some weigh much, much, more. Halibut has a white, firm, meat with a delicate taste, and it is perfect when served with Sauce Bercy. The halibut on this menu listing will have been fried, though halibut may also be grilled, baked, or poached. Though it may be tasty, grilled halibut will not be on too many menus as it must be basted continually to prevent it from drying out. A few orders for grilled halibut could hang up an entire section in the kitchen.

 

If the menu had noted flétan noir, that would have been the smaller Greenland halibut, also called the black halibut, which is an equally tasty fish. Most of the halibut on French menus will have been flown into France chilled or frozen. The Atlantic halibut has been over-fished, and with severely depleted stocks, virtually no halibut fishing is allowed anywhere in the Atlantic.

   

Filets de Colin Sauce Bercy
(When on French menus, the name "Colin" may be used for one of five or
six different, but relatively similar fish from the cod family).
The three usual suspects are:  Merlu Européen, European Hake; Lieu Jaune, Pollack; or Lieu Noire, Saithe.
Photograph courtesy of Les Recettes De Cuisine.com

 

Saumon Grillé Sauce Bercy –  Grilled salmon served with the Sauce Bercy for fish.

 

Filet de Plie Farcie au Saumon à la Sauce Bercy – Filet of plaice stuffed with salmon and served with Sauce Bercy.    

Sauce Bercy for meat dishes.   

The Sauce Bercy for meats still uses white wine though, obviously, the fish stock is replaced with veal stock and bone marrow. The shallots, parsley, and a light touch of garlic remain; thyme, sometimes seen in recipes for Sauce Bercy for fish, is omitted. 

 

Duo of Beef, red wine braised beef cheek
 and roast beef fillet, with Sauce Bercy.
Photograph courtesy of Alpha.
www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/2047130716/

                 

Beurre Bercy or Sauce Beurre Bercy for steaks and roasts.

  

Beurre Bercy becomes a sauce only as it is served; it is really a condiment. This condiment is a thick flavored butter like Beurre Maitre d'Hotel and or Beurre d'Escargot. These thickened flavored butters are used to flavor steaks and roasts and are added just as the dish is served. Beurre Bercy will be decoratively placed on a steak or slices from a roast and allowed to melt over the meat.

Steak frites with Beurre Bercy
Photograph courtesy of Trip Advisor

Beurre Bercy on French Menus:

   

Entrecôte Grillée Sauce Beurre Bercy, Purée de Salsifis – A grilled entrecote (rib-eye) steak served with the Bercy butter sauce for steaks and roasts. A puree of salsify accompanies the entrecote. The salsify here is served as an alternative to potatoes as it is a white root vegetable. For those who have not met up with the vegetable before, fresh salsify looks somewhat like a thin parsnip. 

 

Salsify is also called the oyster plant, a name given by those who considered the plant to taste like oysters; I can't entirely agree with that, but then I am naturally argumentative, especially as I had enjoyed salsify when it was served like asparagus. 

  

Salsify
Photograph courtesy of Johnny's Seeds

             

Pièce de Boeuf, Sauce Poivre ou Beurre Bercy – This menu listing translates as a piece or a portion of beef; more often called in French the steak des bouchers, in English that's the butcher's cut or butcher's steak. This steak is an especially tasty cut from the rump and offered here served with either a pepper sauce or the Beurre Bercy, the thick Bercy butter. When a pepper sauce is chosen, it will almost always be made with green peppercorns.  Green peppercorns are milder than black peppercorns and allow the chef to control the taste. If the steak is chosen with Bercy Butter, a thick portion of the butter will be placed on top of the steak; as it melts, it flavors the steak. 

 

Bercy as the largest wine market in the world.
Bordeaux wines and French bottles

Before mass-produced bottles, nearly all wines, including Bordeaux wines, were brought to Bercy in barrels, not bottles. Bottles were made by hand and easily broken. 

Before mass-produced bottles, the average size of a bottle depended on the amount of puff that a bottle-maker had, and that could be anywhere from 600 cl to 800 cl. Hand-blown wine bottles were reserved for the finest wines; it was only in the late 19th century that automated-bottling machinery became available. Before automated bottling-manufacturing machinery and bottling plants, 95% of all wine was sold by the barrel. To buy a few liters of wine, you took your own flask, usually a large pottery jug, and filled it up at the wine merchant's shop, a practice sometimes still seen in the country.

Avenue de Terroirs de France, Bercy
Photograph courtesy of Payton Chung
www.flickr.com/photos/paytonc/5220295/ 

Bercy's wine dealers often tested blends of wine in their cellars and gauged public response before sending the details back to the growers. Some of those wine blends became well-known and remain famous. Bercy's wine dealers had immense cellars where their wines were stored and blended. Then from the end of the 19th century, Bercy also bottled many of its wines; even then, it was still cheaper to bring in wines by train in massive barrels, the precursor of tanker trucks, and have the wine bottled and labeled after arrival. One building in Bercy had the most extensive wine cellar in the world with a capacity of over twenty million gallons.

Wine storage

Visit the Museum of Wine in Bordeaux 

In 1860, Bercy became part of Paris as part of the 12th arrondissement. Until the 1960s, Bercy had remained Paris's premier wine market and its main bottling center. As the smaller vintners in Bordeaux and elsewhere began buying or renting equipment for bottling their wines, many of Bercy's additional services including bottling closed. With the end of Bercy's bottling plants, so ended the need for a central wine market.

From the 17th century Bercy
was also the entertainment center for Paris.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Bercy also had large pleasure houses with beautiful gardens that reached the Seine; these were the most extensive drinking, dancing, and dining taverns inside or outside Paris. If you were too drunk to ride your  horse or carriage home, local carriages would bring you to your door, and you still saved money compared to drinking and dining in Paris.

Bercy as a port in Paris.

By the 16th century, Paris was the largest city in Europe, with a population of over 500,000. Some 80% of Paris's supplies came into the city daily by water as most roads were unusable for carriages in winter. In the summer, even ox-carts could not supply the quantities that the City of Paris consumed; the distances were too great. From the late 16th century and onwards, France built canals all over France to provide connections between its seas, river systems, towns, and cities. Trains did not arrive in France until the late 19th century. Good national roads only came after the trains, and so until the trains, waterways ruled France's economy.

Part of the old port of Bercy that was reconstructed.
Photograph courtesy of Frédérique PANASSAC
www.flickr.com/photos/10699036@N08/2494655796/

The ports on the river Seine developed their own specialties, and these ports were the lifeblood of Paris. Large ships coming up the Seine from the Atlantic could reach as far as the city of Rouen in Normandy. Roeun is just over 100 km (62 miles) from Paris, and from there, smaller boats and barges would take the products, produce, lumber, livestock, oil, wine, and brandies to dock at Paris's River Seine ports and quays.

Today, Paris's ports, quays, and docks are mostly just names on maps. Nevertheless, Next time you look at a map of Paris, consider how many ports, wharves, and quays there were, and there are quite a few no longer on the maps. I will mention just two forgotten Seine Ports: the Port of the Hotel de Ville, the city hall, which had a working port next to it, and the Port Saint-Nicolas, which was in front of the Louvre.                                                                   

Bercy was ideally positioned before the canals were built; it is a relatively short distance from the River Marne and the River Oise. 

     Bercy and its park from the air.
Photograph courtesy of Mortimer62
www.flickr.com/photos/51408284@N02/5103499966/

Bercy today.

From the 1960s until the beginning of the 1990s, Bercy was in decay; then, in the 1990s, the area began to be gentrified with major entertainment centers, restaurants, boutiques, and much more.  

Much has been preserved or reused in protected buildings; however, on the maps, only four streets remain with the names of wines: the Cour St Emillion, Rue de Pommard, Rue de Reuilly, and the Terrace de Champagne. At a stretch, I could add the Avenue des Terroirs de France, for a fifth. I may have missed another one or two streets with wine names, and I will be happy to have them added to the list.

Bercy Village today.
www.flickr.com/photos/matthewblack/4410494413/
Photograph courtesy of Matthew Black

One of the largest parks in Paris is now the Parc de Bercy; the park was built from three magnificent interconnected gardens. The Parc de Bercy is linked directly to the Passerelle Simone-de-Beauvoir, a footbridge that also accepts cyclists. The footbridge connects the 12th arrondissement directly to the National Library of France across the River Seine.

Bercy Park.
Photograph courtesy of Amelia Pergl
www.flickr.com/photos/perglland/21563794969/

Bercy as an entertainment center today.

 France’s cinémathèque is situated at 51 Rue de Bercy.

The UGC Ciné-Cité Bercy, the largest or second largest multiplex cinema in Paris with 18 screens is at 2 Cour St-Emilion.

The Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy is a sports hall also used for large concerts; it seats, depending on the sport or concert, anywhere from 7,000 to 17,000. Its address is 8 Boulevard de Bercy. 

Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy.
Photograph courtesy of Philippe Berdalle 
Photograph from YouTube
Coldplay perform December 14th, 2011, at the Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy 

Set in old wine warehouses is the Musée des Arts Forains, the Museum of Fairground Arts, a private museum with a vast collection of merry-go-rounds, and restored fairground attractions. Its address is 53 Avenue des Terroirs de France.   

 
Carousels from the Musée des Arts Forains, Bercy.
Photograph courtesy of patrick janicek
www.flickr.com/photos/marsupilami92/15250237789/

The nearest Metro stations.

Two metro stations serve the area, one called, of course, Bercy, and the other Cours St Emilion. 

--------------------------------

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

 

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

Copyright 2010, 2012, 2014, 2020