The World Table

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Czech & Slovak · Main

Svíčková na Smetaně

  • Advanced
  • 50 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

rich · bright · earthy · gently hot Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, with warmth in the tail.

Ingredients

  • 1.2 kg beef rump or topside in one piece
  • 100 g smoked streaky bacon, cut into long 5 mm strips
  • 60 g butter
  • 300 g carrot, diced
  • 200 g celeriac, diced
  • 150 g parsley root or parsnip, diced
  • 200 g onion, sliced
  • 10 black peppercorns
  • 8 allspice berries
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 5 g dried thyme
  • 500 ml beef stock
  • 30 ml white wine vinegar
  • 20 g caster sugar
  • 250 ml double cream
  • 12 g salt
  • 1 lemon, sliced, to serve
  • 150 g whole cranberry sauce, to serve

The skills inside

Sweating aromatics: soft, never brownedThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilStraining & passing through a sieveResting meat & slicing against the grain

The words inside

Smoked Fish: Hot vs. ColdParsnipCeleriac

Allergen screen

Found: dairy · celery

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Lard the beef: drive a thin knife along the grain at intervals and push a cold strip of bacon into each channel, then salt the joint all over.
  2. Brown every face in the butter until dark bronze and lift it out; sweat the carrot, celeriac, parsley root and onion in the same pan until the edges caramelise and the pan smells sweet rather than green.
  3. Return the beef with the peppercorns, allspice, bay, thyme and enough stock to come a third of the way up, cover, and cook at 150C (300F) until a skewer slides in with no resistance, around two and a half hours.
  4. Lift the beef to rest, fish out the bay leaves, then blend the roots with the pan liquid and push the puree through a fine sieve, pressing until only dry fibre is left in the mesh.
  5. Bring the sauce to a bare simmer and sharpen it with the vinegar and sugar until it tastes bright rather than sweet, then pull the pan off the heat and stir in the cream.
  6. Carve across the grain, warm the slices through in the sauce, and plate with dumpling slices, a spoon of cranberry and a lemon slice.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes

  • It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
  • The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
  • Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
  • The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
  • The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.

Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.

Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes

  • Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
  • Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
  • It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
  • The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
  • The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.

Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.

At the Table

The Pour
Vermentino or Sauvignon Blanc
Also Right
Albariño
From the Taps
Witbier
Zero-Proof
Sparkling water with citrus

Lean fish, bright acid, done: coastal whites built beside the same boats; the fresher the fish, the leaner the pour.

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Svíčková na Smetaně The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Czech & Slovak kitchen