Return to Le Relais de L’Entrecôte

One of the most popular posts I’ve ever done for Kilt in the Kitchen was It’s More than a Steak with Green Sauce.  It’s about one of our favorite restaurants in Paris and at the story of a sauce that is so good it has it’s own Facebook page and Wikipedia entry.  We found the place by accident in 2015, returned in 2017 and visited another branch this summer.  It’s not the stereotypical “French restaurant” of your imagination but a more or less family style restaurant that does one thing extraordinarily well.

In our household, the sauce has taken on a life of its own.  A couple of years ago I was obsessed over it and desperate tried to imitate it.  There are lots of recipes all over the internet where people have produced their version of this green sauce (sometimes known as Café de Paris sauce or entrecôte sauce – I’m going to stick with green sauce until I come up with something better).  I tried some of them and  some were better than others, but all seemed to come close but not close enough.  I began improvising and got a little closer to the point where I shared my recipe with you in the blogpost I did a year ago.  That was a good version but I continued to tinker, as I usually do.

This past summer, my true love and I visited Le Relais de L’Entrecôte on the left bank. While we’re eating and watching the parade of Parisian life pass by our table, she says to me “I like your sauce better.”  Well I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I would go so far as to say that my green sauce, my attempt to imitate the fantastic sauce from Le Relais de L’Entrecôte, has come into it’s own.  It is a very good tarragon sauce that is one of my favorite productions.

It’s not all that complicated but there are some difficult elements that have nothing to do with culinary skill.  The first has to do with the tarragon.  Where I live, tarragon is pretty hard to get.  Neither of the supermarkets near me carry it in any volume larger than a couple of sprigs for $3 and it’s pretty rare in the markets.  This sauce uses a lot of tarragon, and I mean a lot.  One batch uses a 1/4 lb and while that may not seem like that much, a 1/4 of tarragon takes up about the same amount of space as two full bunches of parsley.  Fortunately, one of the vendors in my beloved Italian Market is a wholesale produce company that sells retail on the weekends.  They were able to get me 1/2 lb of tarragon, although I got a strange look when I asked for that much.

The second difficult part also has to do with the tarragon.  Separating the leaves from the stalks takes forever and is completely boring. The trick with the colander I shared a couple of weeks ago doesn’t work because the stems aren’t stiff enough and the leaves are too small so there is no other option other than running the stems through your fingers to strip the leaves. Just resign yourself to doing this for a considerable time.

After the leaves are stripped, though, it’s all pretty easy.  Soften the shallots and garlic in olive oil, add the stock, rough chopped tarragon, and the other ingredients, run the mixture through the finest screen of a food mill (or puree in a blender), place back on the heat to reduce by at least half, add butter and you’re done.

I think my sauce has a bit more punch and is a bit more tarragon-intensive but it’s really not possible to do a side by side comparison.  Besides, I’ve stopped trying to duplicate that magnificent sauce.  I’m paying tribute to their sauce with my own creation.  Besides, if I were trying to simply duplicate Le Relais de l’ Entrecôte experience I’d fail because (a) the cut of meat used in France is not available in the US and while London broil is close, it isn’t the same thing, (b) I don’t have a deep fryer so I can’t imitate the fries, and (c) my kitchen isn’t in Paris, it’s in Philadelphia.

I should probably take this opportunity to add that both my true love and I prefer our beef saignant, or rare.  In France, this is not that unusual but in the US or the UK, this is probably a little less cooked than most diners might prefer. I’m also not quite as adept as plating as I could be.

So at this point, I’ve moved beyond trying to imitate this special sauce.  Right now, I’ve been working at creating interesting sauces using herbs (as I did here) and right now, I’m coming up with an alternative version of the green tarragon sauce using a different stock.  If it works out well, I’ll let you know.  If it doesn’t, it’s one more valuable learning experience.

I’d be very interested to hear any experiences you may have with attempts to imitate something you had at a restaurant.  I’d love you have you share it with us.

Recipe – Green tarragon sauce

INGREDIENTS

1 tbl olive oil

2 shallots thinly sliced

3 garlic cloves minced

2 cups chicken stock

2 tsp pepper, freshly ground

1 tsp salt

2 tbl dijon mustard

1/4 lb of tarragon, roughly chopped (this amount of paragon is only a guide and depends on how your tarragon is sold – frankly, there’s no such thing as too much tarragon)

1/4 cup white wine

2 tbl sherry vinegar

1 tsp anchovy paste (or 3-4 anchovies, mashed into a paste)

1-2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

4 tbl butter

DIRECTIONS

Heat the oil and sauce the shallots until soft. Add the garlic.  Add the stock and simmer for 5-7 minutes.

Add all remaining ingredients except butter to the stock.  Transfer to a blender and puree until smooth (or better, transfer to a food mill on the finest screen and puree).

Transfer back to the stove and bring to medium-low.  Reduce by half or a little more.  When reduced, mix in the butter.  The final version should be liquid, not a paste, but should have a real, discernible texture.

Serve warm.