Steak au Poivre, trial run 1

After reading the excellent posts so far, Yurah and I figured we had better get on the ball and start cooking. We tried the steak recipe last night, and it turned out pretty good, although there were definitely lots of room for improvement. We started out with about 2 lbs of Rib-eye steak. The recipe called for NY strip, but the rib-eye looked much more marbled an delicious behind the counter, and both were equally expensive at Whole Paycheck, so we decided on the rib-eye.

Next came the crushing of the peppers. Lacking spice grinder or mortar-pestle, we tried the food processor. No dice, as it basically whirled the peppers around to little effect. Next I tried my wood vise, which worked about as well as you would imagine. Finally I switched to the trusty dead-blow mallet, which worked wonderfully in crushing the peppers. Of course, it also slightly cracked the tupperware underneath, so next time I will back it with something proper.


Seasoning the steaks was very easy, although we found that the amount of salt and pepper called for in the recipe was way too much. Definitely do not need 1/2 cup of crushed peppers to amply cover the steaks. I think we could probably quarter the amount of pepper used and just judge by eye. Also, 1/2 teaspoon of salt per side of steak is definite overkill. I reduced the salt quite a bit, almost by half, and the steaks still turned out pretty salty. So next time I would used less than 1/2 teaspoon per steak, as they are only about 6-8 oz each.

Searing the steaks and finishing them in the oven went smoothly, and with 3 minutes on the stove and 5 minutes in the oven, they turned out about medium, which I liked. For the sauce, we also used Agnes' idea of the ready made demi-glace, and it worked great. The sauce was easy to make, with good flavor, but again I would caution against adding too much salt before tasting it, as I was a bit over-zealous, forgetting that the drippings already pack quite a punch.

Finally we made the frites. We liked Agnes' way of baking instead of deep frying, so we basically tossed the cut fries in some olive oil and put them in the oven at 450 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until they were brown. The frites didn't really turn out too crispy, like fries at Micky-Ds, but they were not bad as a general potato side dish. We may try to bake them longer or use the broiler next time like Agnes suggested. We also forgot to heed Agnes' warning about oiling the aluminum foil first, so the frites stuck like crazy. I'm thinking of baking them on wire-racks (like those used for cooling cookies) next time to minimize this.

Overall we thought this was a pretty quick and easy dinner, doable on a weeknight. Next time we'll watch the salt and it should be good. On Saturday we plan to tackle the other three recipes, which seem more complicated, and might require an ice-cream maker? Also, we need help on taking good food pictures!