It is early February, and it is cold with some snow cover on the ground. Today is a bright, sunny day and although the forecast is calling for temperatures to further drop down to mid teen range it feels way better than gloomy dark days. This morning as I was doing some work, I was listening our local radio station in the background. It was just funny how much the fast food has been promoted. Mantra of “not cooking” is being pushed on, supposedly so you can have more time. More time, for what? We have been stuck at home for more or less almost a year. There a few things one can do to remain sane in these troubling times and cooking a good meal might be just one of them!
This weekend I made Steak au Poivre, a traditional French dish. It is absolutely fantastic steak that literarily made me smile! This nirvana like experience kept me on for a hours. It was absolutely delicious stake!
Interestingly it doesn’t take much time to prepare at all. Once you have all ingredients assembled together it takes about 5 minutes of cooking and you have a diner fit for kings!
The recipe has been adapted from my favorite chef Greg Easter.
| Prep Time | 20 min |
| Cook Time | 7 min |
| Servings |
steak
|
- 400 g strip steak
- 1 1/2 tsp black pappercorns whole
- 3/4 tsp green peppercorns whole
- 3/4 beef stock cube
- 2 tbsp Demi-glace or substitute with water or beef stock
- 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 30 ml cognac
- 70 ml heavy cream 35% MF
- 25 g unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 tbsp shallots finely chopped
- 1/2 tsp dry parsley
- extra virgin olive oil to drizzle
- flat-leaf parsley for garnish
- matches or fire lighter for flambé
Ingredients
|
|
- Take the steak out of refrigerator about 1 hour before cooking. Prepare the steak by cutting off any excess fat around the edges.
- Using mortar and pestle grind 3/4 of beef stock cube. Add green and black peppercorns to the mortar and coarsely grind.
- Spread the spice mixture over the large plate making an area roughly equal to size of the steak.
- Put the steak between two pieces of plastic wrap and tenderize it with mallet. Gently beat the steak to about 1/2" (10-12 mm) even thickness.
- Lay the steak down over the spice mixture and press down. You want spice mixture only on the bottom side of the steak!
- Drizzle little olive oil and evenly coat the top of the steak. Set aside for about 10 minutes.
- Cut shallots and assemble the rest of ingredients: butter, cream, cognac, dry parsley, Worcestershire sauce and Demi-glace.
- Over medium high heat (7.5 out of 10) preheat heavy non stick skillet up to 150ºC (300ºF).
- With oiled side down place the steak in the hot skillet and brown for 2.5 to 3 minutes. At 2 minutes time mark add the butter and shallots beside the steak. As the butter melts lift the skillet and tip it from side to side making the butter flow around the steak.
- At 2.5 or 3 minute turn the steak over to the seasoned side, drizzle Worcestershire sauce around the steak.
- Pour cognac on top of the steak and ignite with match to create flambé, make sure to stay back when you doing it.
- After about 1.5-2 minutes of cooking time transfer the steak to the plate.
- Add Demi-glace, cream and dry parsley to the skillet, mix with heat proof silicone spatula, turn off the heat. The residual heat from the hot skillet will be sufficient to thicken the sauce after about 1 minute of cooking.
- Plate the steak, pour over the sauce, garnishing with chopped fresh parsley and serve immediately!
No Comments