Garniture Bordelaise

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The garniture bordelaise draws its identity from Bordeaux, marrying the region’s legendary wines with its prized cèpes (porcini mushrooms) and shallots in a garnish of remarkable depth and earthiness. The garnish has two principal forms: for meat, it centres on cèpes sautéed in oil with shallots and parsley, accompanied by sauce bordelaise built on red wine reduction with bone marrow; for fish (à la bordelaise in the Bordelais tradition, confusingly distinct from the Parisian codification), it features a white wine sauce. The meat garnish begins with fresh cèpes, cleaned meticulously — never washed but wiped with a damp cloth and scraped — then sliced 5mm thick and sautéed over very high heat in a mixture of olive oil and a little butter. The mushrooms must not be crowded; they need direct contact with the hot pan surface to achieve proper caramelisation. Once golden, finely minced shallot and chopped parsley (the persillade) are added in the final 30 seconds. The accompanying sauce bordelaise is a masterwork: shallots sweated in butter, red Bordeaux wine (a young Saint-Émilion or similar) reduced by three-quarters with thyme, bay, and mignonette pepper, then mounted with demi-glace and finished with diced poached bone marrow. The marrow must be soaked in cold salted water for 2-3 hours to purge blood, then poached in barely simmering salted water for 12-15 minutes until translucent. It is sliced into rounds and placed atop the meat at service, never cooked into the sauce which would cause it to dissolve. This garnish epitomises the Bordelais philosophy that wine belongs in the sauce, not just the glass.

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