Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Cookbooking: Steak au Poivre

"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook."
Julia Child


Steak au Poivre avec Potato Dauphinoise is not a JC approved dinner, but it was super fun and tasty!

The steak recipe came from another cookbook from the library, Cooking for Two. I liked this book because it had alot of the recipes that we learned in French Cooking Class, but in smaller portions.

So off I went to the local meat house, Cioffi's Meat Market & Deli to buy some steaks. I also had to buy some Vermouth as this book really likes the booze. They call for vermouth and sherry alot. I had to ask the liquor store guy where to find Vermouth. You can find it in the random section below the Pina Colada mixes and the Sake. I generally use red wine instead of sherry. That could be a giant cooking no-no, but I am cheap and do not want to buy sherry as well. I just go with the theory that they are both red so they must be interchangeable...

Another exciting purchase of the weekend was a cast iron skillet. I did not have one. So I bought it at Walmart. What- it was cheap! And it was "pre seasoned". There goes any foodie cred that I might have built up.

This was the first time that I had cooked a steak in the oven. I browned the steak in the skillet and then put it directly in the oven! It then cooked there for 6 minutes for quite a nice medium. I did turn the steak once but the recipe did not tell me to. The freakiest part of the recipe was when it called for adding Brandy (red wine) to the pan for the sauce. There was a small aside that mentioned the brandy could CATCH FIRE when you put it in the pan. If that happens, cover the pan with a tight fitting lid and remove from heat. Um. That didn't happen, thank goodness.

I also made a substitution with the potatoes. The recipe is pretty basic, just slicing potatoes on the mandolin and cooking them with butter and cream. I halved the amount of butter and used Evaporated Skim Milk instead of cream! I trick that I picked up from my good friend, Rocco in his cookbook, Now Eat This. The milk is evaporated already so you don't have the curdling problem that you have when trying to heat non-fat milk.

I am leaning towards buying this book as well. I like that it has some "special occasion" menus in the back for days like Easter and Valentines day- complete with desserts!

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