demi-glace debacle…a tale of a broken heart
I got nothing for you…actually nothing but a broken heart and a stock pot of burnt beef demi-glace. Oh yeh, I said burnt, charred beef demi-glace. If you read my post at Accidental Hedonist over the weekend you’ll know that I made an exquisite batch of beef stroganoff from oxtail. After I picked the delectable meat from the bones I dumped them into a pot, covered them with water and let them simmer for about 6 hours. Then I stuck the pot in the garage to cool and chill. Today the stock was no longer liquid, it was gelatinous and jiggly and oh my, I actually became giddy at this point…I had a good pot of beef stock that I could easily transform into beef demi-glace. Demi-glace is just intensely reduce stock and its sole purpose in life is to enrich pan sauces. I have some short-ribs that I’d like to braise and finish off with a rich pan sauce so I thought this was kismet.
I skimmed the fat off the top, reheated the stock, strained it three times, and began to reduce it. At one point it was perfect and then I lost my focus, Alex was running the vacuum in the kitchen and I needed to get out of his way so I ran upstairs to take a shower…15 minutes later I returned to a pan of black, burnt, acrid sludge. How could I be so stupid, so careless? Arrrgh!!! It’s not like it cost me a bunch of money…no, the most expensive part was the glug (actually 3) of brandy that I added near the end. My pain is derived from having something so perfect and rare and then through my own neglect I lost it. Frack!!!
Why the champagne (sparkling wine, of course)? Well, we are in the midst of another friggin blizzard so it’s impossible to acquire any form of alcohol today and cheap sparkling wine was all I had on hand. Obviously sorrows must be drowned. My all-time-favorite sympathetic, broken-heart fix-it food is sparkling wine, potato chips, and caviar with creme fraiche. We have no caviar so I’m making do with sparkling wine, potato chips and Newman-O’s.
What do you eat when you’re heart broken?
