Tag: steak

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

195. Pan-Seared Filet Mignon with Merlot Sauce p.428

Here’s the recipe for the Merlot sauce part of this dish,

This is the second time I’ve made this dish. The first was almost two years ago, when I made it for my dining companion’s birthday dinner. Part of her birthday present was that the steak would be just for her, not for The Project too. That meant I could just cook and serve without the awkward photo session in the kitchen that dishes for The Project require, and I didn’t have to be taking mental notes for a future blog post (but of course I couldn’t help myself). That first time this steak was absolutely fantastic, and I was looking forward to making it again to count it towards The Project.

In this dish filet-mignon is browned in a skillet, then finished in the oven, and served topped with a red wine sauce. The Merlot sauce starts by making a caramel, then dissolving vinegar in the boiling sugar. In another pan onions are softened in butter, and wine, veal stock or demi glace, are added and simmered. The mixture is seasoned, and the solids are strained out. The liquid is added to the caramel, and heated until it’s dissolved. The steaks are served drizzled with the sauce.

The Good: It’s filet mignon with a buttery wine and veal demi-glace sauce, it’s fantastic, if you have any love in your heart for red meat, you will like this dish. The caramel is the surprising part of the sauce, adding sweetness, but also a depth which compliments the browned meat. Filet mignon is all about the so-tender-it-shouldn’t-be-possible texture, and a rich sauce really enhances that. Since it’s a lean cut of meat, the buttery sauce doesn’t put it over the top. Demi-glace is a wonderful wonderful thing, everything it touches just gets better, enhancing flavours, smoothing textures, and bringing the whole sauce together.

The Bad: While the dish was delicious, the technique could have been improved. The steaks are seared in the pan, then roasted to finish cooking through. This builds up a good deal of delicious, wonderful, splendid, magical fond on the bottom of the pan. These browned bits are usually deglazed and used as part of a pan sauce, but this recipe commits the nearly unforgivable sin of just throwing all that goodness out. It also doesn’t ask for any juices that run from the steaks as they rest to be poured into the sauce. That’s just silly. By skipping these steps the sauce can be completely made in advance, which is convenient, but you end up throwing away what could have been the most flavorful part of the dish.

I made a mistake with these steaks and trusted my meat thermometer over my eyes and finger test. I was paranoid about over cooking the steaks (filet mignon overcooks quickly), so I took them out sooner than I should and counted on carryover to finish the job. I radically miscalculated and ended up serving them quite rare. I take my steak rare, and it was a little underdone for me, my dining companion prefers the medium side of medium rare, and it was just not going to happen for her. We were already sitting, and she didn’t want to wait to put it back in the oven, so she nuked it instead. A little part of me dies every time that happens, but it’s a good incentive to get the steaks right the first time.

The Verdict: These were delicious steaks, no question, I’d recommend them to anyone. I think there are a few tweaks that should be made, and it’s certainly not an inexpensive way to do dinner, but if you’re looking for an impressive but not overwhelming dish for a special occasion this is a pretty darn good way to go. The final taste is certainly 5 mushroom worthy, but the travesty of the wasted fond means that I can’t give it full marks.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

25. Skirt Steak Fajitas With Lime and Black Pepper p.430


the recipe

As the title suggests these were extremely minimalist fajitas. Just grilled steak seasoned with lime juice and pepper. They are then served with grilled onions tossed with balsamic, and wrapped in tortillas with a a bit of fresh cilantro, salsa, and lime. I grilled some bell peppers along with the onions. The more Tex-Mex fajitas I’m used to add hot peppers, garlic, and cumin to the marinade but I didn’t miss it all. These were really clean tasting fajitas, simple and unfussy. The lime came through more than I thought it might given that it’s only a ten minute marinade. Increasing the time in the marinade might have helped to bring it through even more. Tossing the griled onions in balsamic was a nice touch, adding a hint of sweetness.

I tend to go a bit hog-wild with fajitas, adding beans, cheese, lettuce, salsa, sour cream, guacamole, onions, cucumber or whatever else is around. It rapidly becomes a burrito with some steak inside. I definitely appreciated the restraint of this recipe, they identified a few key flavours and let them shine. I would absolutely recommend this one, and look forward to making it again this summer.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

15. Grilled Porterhouse Steak p.434

Very similar to this recipe

This recipe has four ingredients. A big porterhouse, cracked peppers, salt, and fire. This is manly steak grilling time, the opportunity to show off your grilling kung-fu. You just dropped a bundle on these steaks and they are now in your hands. Don’t mess up.

I find grilling steak a bit intimidating, I’m doing my very best to learn the vagueries of how different bits of cow react to fire but it’s a big job. I’ve been practicing the palm of the palm technique for judging doneness, and trying to get a sense of how hot a grill really is by holding my hand over it for X seconds. But all in all last summer was full of very mixed grilled steak results. The steaks I was sure were just shy of medium rare went all all the way from bloody to crispy. I don’t seem to have this problem in a pan, it’s just when I get outside. I suppose a lot has to do with hotspots and the weather outdoors, but I think the common factor is me. I’m pretty sure that my grilling chi is out of alignment.

I’m also a bit confused about steaks themselves. The recipe here calls for porterhouses. Turns out all porterhouses are T-bones, but not all T-bones are porterhouses. Apparently this has to do with the amount of tenderloin on the steak… who knew? Looking at the above picture I suppose I didn’t get a porterhouse, or a T-bone, at all. As far as I can tell I used striploin steaks. Which are T-bones, without the tenderloin attached. Confused? I sure am. To add a fun layer of complexity, in Quebec meat is billed using its French name, English translations are sometimes spotty and always metric. Remember that your 12 oz porterhouse is really a 340 gram chateaubriand.

In the end I got some very nice looking meat, that I salted, peppered and slapped on the grill. This was the first time I’d used this particular grill, and had no clue how it behaved. All in all I think I did OK. Goldilocks would have been proud, our three steaks were overdone, underdone, and just right.

The recipe (in the book, not the linked version) recommends searing the steaks for a couple minutes over very hight heat and then moving them to a cooler spot to finish cooking for ~15 minutes. They also recommend using a meat thermometer to check for doneness. This would have been a great idea if I’d had a meat thermomitor up on the island, and if my steaks hadn’t nearly finished cooking in the few minutes it took to sear them. The recipe does call for one and half inch steaks, mine were more like an inch thick, so this could explain the cooking times.

Overall everyone was delighted with their beef, I like mine on the rare side, and one of my dining companions prefers her steak grey. We all won. I think I butchered my adherence to the recipe pretty badly here, so I’m not sure I’m fit to comment on it. Pleasantly, summer is around the corner, and I’ll have ample opportunity to redo this. Yup, I’ll have to make a big succulent porterhouse in the name of science… life is hard.

a temporary rating of

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

8. Steak Diane p. 427

I can’t find a recipe to link to, and that’s a real shame. This dish was a knockout. The classic version uses tenderloin, here The Book calls for much more affordable sirloins. The steaks were flavourful and ended up fillet mignon tender after a pummeling with an empty wine bottle. The steaks were seasoned with salt and pepper, then pan seared. I cooked down some shallots in the fat in the pan, and added a mixture of beef broth, Worcestershire, lemon juice, Dijon, Cognac, and Sherry (I used port). I reduced the sauce, and finished with butter and parsley.

The only change I’d make to this one would be to leave the parsley out of the sauce, it wilted kind of unattractively. I’d leave it out all together, but a bit in a chiffonade over the steaks would look nice.

This took all of 20 minutes to put together and it blew me away. I’m a sucker for a pan sauce because they rescue so much of the goodness you left behind in the pan, and can add complimentary flavours and complexity. In this case the sauce was exceptionally well balanced, and enhanced the flavour of the steaks without covering anything up. I loved that this took no time to prepare (dicing a whole cup of shallots was the most irritating part), didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and left a big impression with my guests. Traditionally the cognac is added right at the end of the dish and ignited table side, the recipe doesn’t call for it but big flames can do wonders to liven up a dinner party.

This was so good I’ve awarded it the first 5 mushroom rating of the project. Well done Steak Diane, well done.