I first knowingly ate beef cheek at a fancy restaurant named Maze, part of the Gordon Ramsey Group, though it had its own presiding chef, and it’s now closed. Below is what I think it looked like, though the picture isn’t mine, it’s from the blog belonging to Eddie Lin.
To be accurate that’s actually ‘tongue and cheek’ – a slice of tongue below, creamy mashed potato in the middle, cheek on top. Creamy mashed potato seems to be essential with beef cheek.
I said ‘knowingly ate’ because it occurs to me that lumps of beef cheek may well have found their way into many meat pies I’ve eaten. If you cook beef cheek long enough it becomes as tender and as melting as any piece of beef in the world.
The second piece of piece beef cheek I ever ate was at a really good restaurant in Colchestser, named Grain. Here it is with mashed potato again, and sprouts. The portion size could have been bigger.
And then last weekend I made my own. Beef cheek seems kind of expensive – the slab below cost about 15 quid but then you do get a staggering number of meals out of it, especially if you eke it out in restaurant size helpings, which admittedly I did not.
Cooking beef cheek is as simple as it gets – you give it a quick fry to seal it. I'm cooking half the quantity above.
And then you stew it for a few hours with red wine, vegetables and herbs: and that’s it Some recipes use dark beer which would be almost as good, though not quite I think. And I added a little bit of sugar at the end to balance the flavour of the sauce, but that obviously depends on your taste. I think a big splash of port might have been even better.
The recipe I wasn’t quite following (I’m constitutionally incapable of following a recipe) also suggested I should liquidize the sauce which I suppose might have given the end result that smooth lacquered look of the Maze version, but I was pretty happy with it as it was.
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