Cutlets à la Nelson

About the dish

A finer party dish from the meat chapter: a richly worked forcemeat of scraped beef and salt-cured ham or tongue, pressed through a hair sieve, steamed in small cutlet molds, and arranged in a ring around a macaroni ragout. The dish shows Erken's French-inspired plating art with a potato or rice border as the base.

How to make it

1. 1

   Pound the forcemeat

   Scrape the beef finely and pound it in a mortar together with the ham or tongue. Add the panade, the brown sauce, and the butter little by little as you pound.

2. 2

   Seasoning and eggs

   When the forcemeat is well worked, add the salt and paprika, and then the well-beaten eggs, one at a time. Stir in the cream.

3. 3

   Sieve the forcemeat

   Press the forcemeat through a hair sieve (fine sieve) and scrape the forcemeat off the underside as you go.

4. 4

   Fill the molds

   Fill the forcemeat into 15–18 small greased cutlet molds, or shape cutlets on a moistened board.

5. 5

   Steam in a water bath

   Set the molds on a rack in a water bath — no more water in the pan than covers the bottom of the molds. Steam in the oven at about 160 °C (320 °F) for roughly 20 minutes. If you shaped them on a board, place the cutlets between two greased papers on a tray or rack over the water bath.

6. 6

   Plating

   Turn the cutlets out of the molds just before plating, dip them in boiling hot, slightly thick tomato sauce, and arrange them in a ring on a potato or rice border. Fill the center with macaroni ragout, sprinkle finely chopped parsley over, and garnish the platter with lettuce or parsley.