French beef fillet with fried and gratinated potatoes on red wine jus, served with aubergine towers

Ingredients for 5 servings:

• 5 beef fillet steaks, approx. 300 g each
• 10 m.-sized potatoes
• 1 piece(s) Parmesan, aged for at least 24 months
• 1 cheese (truffle cheese pearl)
• 2 large onions
• 4 limes
• 5 raspberries
• 3 eggplant(s) (graffiti eggplant(s))
• 3 scoops of buffalo mozzarella
• 3 bunch of chives or the drained mass of the chive-parsley oil from the starter
• 80 g pine nuts
• 1 garlic clove(s)
• 1 lemon(s)
• smoked salt, Danish
• 4 large tomatoes
• n. B. Galbani Parmesan in a block
• n. B. Cheese (truffle cheese pearl)
• 1 bottle of dry red wine
• 3 marrow bones
• 1 oxtail, chopped into pieces
• 1 ½ tbsp tomato paste
• 3 onions
• 1 leek(s)
• ¼ celeriac
• 3 carrots
• 1 ½ liters red wine, dry
• 1 tbsp allspice
• 1 tbsp juniper berries
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 tbsp cranberry jam
• 2 tsp sugar
• e.g. parsley, the stems from the starter or fresh
• 600 g prime rib
• 1 ½ tbsp tomato paste
• 3 onions
• 1 leek(s)
• ¼ celeriac
• 3 carrots
• 1 ½ liters red wine, dry
• 1 tbsp allspice
• 1 tbsp juniper berries
• 1 tbsp peppercorns
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 tbsp cranberry jam
• 2 tsp sugar
• ½ bunch parsley, fresh
• 250 g shallots from the jar
• 70 g sugar
• 250 ml red wine, dry
• 1 Thyme

Instructions

Working time approx. 2 hours 25 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 1 day 17 hours; Total time approx. 1 day 19 hours 25 minutes

from the show “The Perfect Dinner” on VOX from 22.03.23

First, prepare the pearl onions. To do this, place the sugar in a pan and heat it. As soon as it melts and turns brown, add the red wine. The sugar will solidify at first, but will quickly dissolve again as the red wine boils. Then add the drained onions and thyme. Watch everything the whole time, stirring frequently. Allow the liquid to reduce almost completely. As soon as only a thick liquid remains, remove everything from the heat. Prepare the sauce three days in advance, as it should simmer as long as possible. First, place the three marrow bones and the oxtail pieces, and on days 2 and 3, the prime rib meat, on a baking sheet in the oven on the middle rack. Set the oven to 200°C and roast the bones or meat for about 40 minutes. This ensures that everything is cooked thoroughly and delicious roasted aromas develop. At the same time, roughly chop the soup vegetables. Chop the carrots a little smaller, as some of them will be pressed through the sieve later. Quarter the onions. Fry the vegetables in a large pot with oil until well browned. Once the vegetables are lightly fried, add about 1 1/2 – 2 tablespoons of tomato paste and stir. The tomato paste will quickly brown on the bottom. Since the bottom of the pot is now full, fry the remaining vegetables in a separate pan. Add the oxtail and marrow bones to the pot and deglaze everything with 750 ml of red wine. Reduce the wine until a thick syrup forms. Now add the second 750 ml of red wine and the remaining vegetables. Reduce everything by half again. Add the spices and fill the pot almost to the top with water. From now on, let everything simmer gently over a slightly higher heat. Make the sauce fresh three times; it will be made again every three days! In the meantime, prepare the pesto. To do this, use the chive and parsley mixture left over from making the oil. Place it in a blender. Add a crushed garlic clove and the juice of half a lemon. Fry the pine nuts without oil for 2-3 minutes until nicely browned and add. Blend again briefly, and you’re done. Next, bring water to a boil in a pot. Wash the tomatoes and cut a cross-shaped incision all around. Then briefly add the tomatoes to the boiling water. As soon as the skin begins to peel off, remove the tomatoes and simply peel off the skin. Then quarter the tomatoes, remove the seeds and stem, and cut the flesh into small pieces. Dice an onion and heat it in a pot with olive oil. Once the onions are translucent, add the tomato pieces. Now season everything well with salt and pepper. Add more fermented garlic, 2 tablespoons of vegetable stock, and some finely chopped thyme. Mix everything together and let it simmer. Add the unpeeled but washed potatoes to the pot with the cooled tomato water. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of Danish smoked salt. Boil the potatoes until tender, but they should not fall apart. Remove from the water and let cool. Meanwhile, prepare the eggplant towers. Cut three approximately 0.6 mm thick slices from each tower. Fry them lightly on both sides in a pan with 2 tablespoons of butter. After this process, sprinkle each side with fleur de sel and lightly rub in the salt. Place 5 slices on a baking sheet and spread the top with the tomato sauce. Place the thinly sliced ​​buffalo mozzarella on top of the eggplant slices. Spread the green pesto generously over the mozzarella. Layer the remaining ingredients in the same way. When the third layer is complete, secure the tower with 4 thin wooden skewers each. To do this, insert two skewers diagonally opposite each other into the towers from the top. Finally, generously grate Parmesan cheese over the towers, and they’re ready for the oven. Now cut the cooked potatoes about 1 cm deep all around so they can be mashed more easily in the next step. This is best done with a wide knife, which is placed flat-side down on the potato and gently pushed down so that the potatoes are slightly squashed and spread out a little. Then heat a pan over high heat and fill with about 1.5 – 2 cm of rapeseed oil. Add the cold potatoes to the pan; this will make them really crispy brown on the outside and stay nice and soft in the middle. Add the cooked potatoes to the baking tray on which the eggplant towers are already lying. Since the eggplant towers release a lot of liquid, and you don’t want the potatoes to become mushy, it’s a good idea to build a small wall of kitchen paper between the two. After simmering for several hours, the sauce is now ready to be strained. Only add a portion of the carrots to the sieve. Then add the juice from the first two days. Now put everything in a saucepan, stir in about 100g butter and 2 tablespoons of flour, and continue to simmer over medium heat. Finally, fry the onion rings in a pan until they get a nice, deep brown. From this point on, they become crispy and acquire a distinctive sweetness. Garnish with raspberries and the thinly sliced ​​lime. Christian prepared this recipe as a main course on the show “The Perfect Dinner” – Day 3 from Potsdam – on Wednesday, March 22, 2023.