My Recipe for the Week

On Monday my Mom and Paula came and spent the day with me perusing LA and Beverly Hills. After filling up on chocolate truffles from K. Chocolatiers, which were melt in your mouth, amazingly delicious and kind of expensive; we then invaded the Beverly Hills Cheese Store! The Beverly Hills Cheese Store has every kind of cheese you can think of and you get to sample as many as you want. Carie you would have thought you had died and gone to cheese Heaven! For dinner I wanted to do something special to go with our cheese and chocolate(oh and bottle of sake, why sake...because Paula liked the bottled) so I decided to make Steak au Poivre, also known as Steak Diane. It's peppered steak served with a Cognac/ Brandy sauce. Interesting fact I learned while shopping for the brandy. Brandy and Cognac are essentially the same thing, only Cognac comes from the Cognac region of France and anything outside of that has to be called Brandy. I went with the $10 bottle of Brandy rather than the $30 bottle of Cognac. The recipe I used comes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child, with the little changes I did. Sorry the instructions are long, Julia is very detailed.

Steak au Poivre
Serves 4-6 people depending on your menu

 2 Tblsp of a mixture of several kinds of peppercorns. (I used black peppercorns and my pepper grinder)
4 - 6 steaks 3/4 to 1 inch thick. ( A porterhouse is a nice cut to use, but any steak cut about 1-inch thick)
1 1/2 Tblsp Butter
1 1/2 Tblsp vegetable oil
Dry the steaks on a paper towel. Rub and pres the crushed peppercorns into both sides of the meat with your fingers and the palms of your hands. Cover with waxed paper. Let stand for at least half an hour; 2-3 hours are even better, so the flavor of the pepper will penetrate the meat.

Put the butter and oil in the skillet and place over moderately high heat until you see the butter foam begin to subside; this indicates the oil is hot enough to sear the steaks. Saute the steak on one side for 3-4 minutes and regulate the heat so the oil is very hot but not burning. Turn the Steak and Saute the other side for 3-4 minutes. It will be about medium rare at this point. (I had really thick steaks so once they were seared I took them out of the saute pan and put them on a baking sheet in the oven preheated to 350 degrees F. I let them cook for about another 10 minutes while I made the sauce in the pan, you can do this if you like your steak more medium to well done).

Brandy Sauce
1 Tblsp Butter
2 Tblsp minced shallots
1/2 cup beef stock
1/3 cup Cognac
3-4 Tblsp Room temperature butter.
Using the skillet you used to sear the steaks, pour the fat out of the skillet from the steaks. Add the new butter and add the shallots and cook slowly for a minute. Pour in the stock and boil down rapidly over high heat. Then add the Cognac and boil rapidly for a minute or two more to evaporate the alcohol. Off heat swirl in the butter a half tablespoon at a time. Taste sauce and Season with salt and pepper.
Pour the sauce over the steak and Serve! =D yum!