Evgeniy Sushko cooked his joues de bœuf au vin rouge for our shoot at the Citadel restaurant in Lviv in September 2013. It is the restaurant’s hit dish: in his words, many guests come back to the hotel just to have it again.
The cheeks braise slowly in the oven in a sauce of oxtail stock and red wine, and are served on mashed potato with nutmeg. The chef notes that the dish can be made in advance, even a week ahead, and that fried ceps can be added.
Method
- Sauce: cut the vegetables into medium dice.
- Cut the oxtail into pieces and fry it with the vegetables. Add water and simmer over low heat for 3 hours.
- Strain the finished stock, discarding the vegetables and bones. Add the red wine and cook for another hour.
- Beef cheeks: clean the cheeks of membranes, season them with salt and pepper and fry them on both sides.
- Cut the vegetables into medium dice and fry them until golden.
- Put the fried cheeks and vegetables into a metal gastronorm pan and pour the meat sauce over them. Add the rosemary, thyme and garlic.
- Heat the oven to 140 °C and cook the cheeks for 3.5 hours.
- Leave the cooked cheeks in the sauce until they cool to room temperature. Strain the sauce through a sieve.
- Make the mashed potato with the potatoes, water, milk, cream, butter and salt, and add the nutmeg to the finished mash.
- Reheat the cheeks in the sauce.
- Put a little mash in the center of the plate, place a piece of cheek on top and pour over the sauce. Fried ceps can be added.
- The dish can be made in advance, even a week ahead.
The dish in the photograph was cooked by the restaurant for this story. Photo: Oleksandr Slyadnyev.
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