An Oscar Fit For An Oscar

At Jim's old restaurant, the Ebb Tide, they used to serve Filet Mignon (and chicken) à la Oscar.
Traditionally the protein was veal and was pounded into a scallopini. But the pocketbook and animal "ethics" say, "Nay!" for "The Tide" and for us as well.

Various sources claim that the "Oscar" was either the King of Oscar II of Sweden who was a fan of the dish or Oscar Tshirky, the maitre d'hotel of Delmonico's Restaurant and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. The latter also popularized the Waldorf salad, Thousand Islands Dressing and may have had a hand in Eggs Benedict! Anyone who has ever seen this blog will know of our penchant for various on the Eggs Benedict here, here and here.

But lest you think that we are in a Sauce Hollandaise rut, we'll throw the curve. In the recipes for dishes served in the Oscar style that we found, the protein is served with the traditional asparagus, sauce béarnaise and crabmeat (or crayfish). Oooh, so tricky! They replaced lemon with tarragon and vinegar. OK, so Escoffier would put it in the same "mother sauce" classification because the two sauces are pretty similar. We did the Escoffier version with Jim's parents a while back and it was good, but we decided to give Sonja Lee's "Sauce" version a try.

Jim forgot the cayenne, but it was pretty darned tasty, even though we've had mixed success with her recipes. We plated the filet, the asparagus, the crab and topped it all with way too much sauce. And when we say "too much", we mean just enough. The 2003 Clarendon Hill Grenache was a bit hot on the tongue, but the flavors worked pretty well together.

Jim and Peta