Steak au Poivre: Saucy!

Eating Steak with Herbed Frites.

We picked up a few New York steaks from Costco in preparation for this dish. While the steaks were being made, I was focused on making the fries, which I have already made a post about.

This post... is about steak! Anyway, prior to our trial, we had seen Andrew and Yurah's posting and I noticed in their photos, their sauce was yellowish. We had very different results.

As per the recipe, we tried tor crush whole peppercorns. We didn't get the green ones, but instead used mixed black and white peppercorns. I think here, we didn't really know how fine to crush them. Since crushing was fairly difficult without a mortar and pestal (or without a vice!), we left them fairly rough.

Then the mustard was added to one side of the steaks while the cast iron was heating up. We weren't sure which side went down, the mustard side or the bottom side. But we figured, it must be the mustard side to get it into the pan. As the mustard touched down on the fiery black metal, the mustard seems to burn up. We let it cook for 3 minutes, then flipped it. We questioned whether we should have added mustard to both sides, and after some discussion, we added mustard on the bare side, now facing the top. Then, into the oven the cast iron went with its temporary inhabitants.

Once done, the steaks were put out on plates to rest, and the cut shallots were tossed into the pan with the remnants of seared meat crust, crispened mustard, and near whole, but somewhat softened peppercorns. Then the wine was poured in. Anything's better with wine. Especially red wine.

The wine reduced a bit and an interesting sauce was born. We scooped the red-gray concoction onto the steak, and we were done. But our sauce didn't look too appetizing. The mixture of mustard yellow with maroon-red wine resulted in a muddy looking sauce that sat between us and our medium-rare protein.

Frites dropped by, on a plate asking to accompany our steaks. We obliged and dug in. However unappealing the sauce looked, it actually tasted pretty good. I would eat this again, but maybe figure out how to make it look better. In fact, I thought, it'll look better with some fries on top... and voila... Steak Frites!! Anyway, Kirk and Ei-lun's photos of the steaks looked awesome, and inspired us to step up our presentation. So check out our Scallop and Endives photo! =P

New York steaks from Costco.

Crushing peppercorns and prepping the herbs for the fries.

Putting Dijon on the steaks.

Steaks are ready to go into the cast iron.

Let the searing begins.

Shallots with wine. Where'd the mustard go?

Adding the red wine/mustard sauce on top of the steaks.

Steak with sauce.

Frites + Steak = Steak Frites!

Moules Mariniere: Freshness Is Key!

Mussels!

We had a little trouble trying to find fresh mussels. Lee went to Whole Foods in Palo Alto, and they had some for $5.99/lb. But, when tapped, none closed, so they were pretty dead. The clerk said to come back the next day. Lee was thinking about trying the Los Altos Whole Food since it’s bigger but ended up looking at Najiya Market in Mountain View, but they didn’t have them. Across the street, at Ranch 99, Lee found very fresh mussels for $3.99/lb., but they came in a bag, so you couldn’t sort through individual dead ones.

We started off going through the recipe but we didn’t have thyme, which probably was a major element that was missing, but the freshness of the mussels made up for that. We cooked the mussels for about 3 minutes. Most of the mussels were cooked well, but a few were still a little raw. So, like the other posts mentioned, probably a little longer would be better, say 4-5 minutes. We substituted chervil for the parsley since we had a bunch left from the frites trial.

Overall the mussels were very good in the onion, butter and wine sauce. I think the key element is freshness when it comes to this recipe. We had a few dead mussels, but not to many. So I’d say sourcing your seafood is a very important part of making this dish. The sauce went well with bread as well.

Onions, butter, and wine, all cooking in harmony.

Adding the mussels into the pan.

Mussels opening up. Fresh!

A lone mussel wades in butter and wine. C'est la vie!

Frites: Mandolin makes it easy.

Steak Frites w/o the Steak

I couldn’t find Idaho Potatoes while we were shopping for supplies at Whole Foods, so I sub’d in Yukon ones. Since our dinner was for two, we only used two potatoes instead of four as the recipe had called for. I used a mandolin to get a consistent matchstick sized cut on each fry. Then when we were about 5 minutes out from the finishing of the steak, I dumped about half of the fries into the deep fryer at 350 degrees. After 5 minutes , I took the fries out, but they were a little limp. Lee suggested to go at a higher temp, and I had just noticed on the roto-fryer that it recommended fries at 370 degrees, so I up’d the temperature. Also, Lee had noticed there was a “steam” coming out from the vents, and that might be causing the sogginess of the fries. So we kept the lid open to get all the steam out.

The second round yielded much more crispy fries. But since we changed two elements, I’m not sure what fixed the problem (the higher temp or the opening of the lid to keep steam out). We added in the herbs and salted the fries. We also tried a few deep fried sage leaves like we've seen at Cesar in North Berkeley. The result of the second batch were much better and had a better crunchy texture. I put some on top of the steaks like they do at Bistro Jeanty. It made the steaks looks more dramatic, in my opinion, and hide the sauce which didn't look so appealing.

Using the mandolin to make fry cuts in a matter of minutes.

Cut potatoes.

Submerged!

Coming out of the deep fryer.