Compound Butters, Small Sauces, & Lamb Chops

This class is about compound butters, small sauces, and how to use them with meat. Here you can see classmate Avi food-processing some pimentos (roasted red peppers) into some margarine. The technique requires you to put whatever you want into the processor AND THEN add butter/margarine little by little until you get the consistency that you want. There are no fixed recipes for our compound butters - you usually will add ingredients until it looks and tastes exactly how you'd like it. This mixture below was made from pimentos and margarine, but you can add spices, herbs, fruits, juices, vegetables, essential oils, etc. to butter to enhance the flavor.

When the mixture is blended to your satisfaction,spread on a piece of parchment or wax paper and roll into a log. You can keep this in the freezer for months! Alternately, pipe out rounds or shapes from this mix and freeze them. When solid, put in a plastic bag and pull out a few when you need some!

We attempted a few small brown sauces as well. Brown sauces usually means they are made with brown stock and/or demi-glace (a meat stock reduction). This one is a sauce chasseur, French for "sauce of the hunter." It's called this because of the mushrooms and tomato concasse - it is said that hunters would make a "stew" using these types of ingredients when they were out in the field. It's a hearty sauce and very flavorful.

I served it with two pieces of sauteed lamb.

Next is the bordelaise sauce, made with shallots, red wine, fresh thyme, and demi-glace and served on lamb as well.

Finally, I seared some steak (in the middle) and a few small pieces of lamb to try a Steak Diane sauce.

Here it is! A Diane sauce's key ingredients are brandy, Worchestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard.

Below, classmate Bonnie flambé-ing her brandy for the steak Diane.

 Below, the setup for Anna Potatoes - sliced potatoes layered with butter/margarine and nutmeg, baked in the oven like a potato pie.

 This is a compound "butter" I made to miz into my mashed potato side dish - it has lemon juice and fresh sage mixed in.

 Roasted garlic! Also for the mashed potatoes.

 Lamb chops! I cooked a rack of 4 (and ate them all myself!)

 The chop is coated with oil, cracked white peppercorns and salt. It needs to be seared on each side.

 Here is my finished dish, served with blanched asparagus.

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This is the recipe for my favorite of the three small sauces:

Bordelaise Sauce 

 1 TB sliced shallots

butter/margarine

red wine

1 sprig fresh thyme

demi-glace & glace du viande (meat glaze)

if you don't have these, substitute with a mushroom or chicken gravy

 1 bay leaf

salt

pepper

Heat a skillet to medium-high and melt butter/margarine in pan.

Sweat shallots until transluscent.

Pour in red wine to cover the bottom of the pan.

Add demi-glace and glace du viande, or your subsitute liquid.

Cook on medium-high heat, and add bay leaf and whole thyme.

Reduce until the sauce coats the back of your stirring spoon (should not be too thick).

Remove the bay leaf and thyme and add more demi or stock if too thick, or let continue cooking until reduced to desired consistency.

Serve on steak, veal, lamb, or chicken.

Enjoy!