May 12, 2008

Peppercorn Sauce Over Steak

I must admit, it has been a pleasantly busy weekend - a brief calm before the storm of the coming week. I've had little time to prepare an elaborate dish, so I hope you'll forgive another steak recipe. This time the emphasis is on making a peppercorn sauce to go over your cut of choice. Since this meal is relatively straight-forward, I thought I'd experiment with some cropping and Photoshop touch-ups of my pictures.

What am I trying to hide? Perhaps if I leave the cooking up to the imagination, the results will turn out better. ;-) I jest. The work here is in preparing the sauce. I had to journey to that distant land known as Hannaford to find a shallot; Price Chopper is failing me more and more regularly. Finely chop a tablespoon of shallot, cook in some olive oil, and then add a clove of garlic and two-thirds of a teaspoon of peppercorn. I couldn't find fresh, brine-packed peppercorn, so I simply used McCormick's instead. I've got quite a collection of McCormick seasonings at this point - maybe it's time to invest in a spice rack (or a spice weasel? "BAM!").

Attention span: gone. Now would be the time to add a cup of red wine and (shockingly!) I had none handy. But a cup of chicken stock and half a cup of water will do the trick. Boil ten to fifteen minutes until the sauce has reduced. Strain into a smaller saucepan and melt in two tablespoons of butter along with another two-thirds teaspoon of peppercorn. Keep this warm while grilling your steak. Your sauce will look creamy as above, but too much time over heat will result in the chicken stock thickening out and that's gross (see the final pictures below).

Grill your steak as you would normally. And, when finished, slice thin and cover with the peppercorn sauce. As you can see, mine ended up separating before the steak was finished. Alas, my cooking skills have much improvement to make. But the steak was delicious and the peppercorn quite good nonetheless. Did my cropped photos work? No? Can you tell they're Photoshopped? Here's a hint: the last photo had a fork in it. ;-) God speed and eat well, friends. Ooops, I totally forgot - I won't be around this coming weekend. Cook something for me... and then devour it yourself!

1 comment:

Lauren said...

Buy a SpiceStack, load your McCormisk spices up and be done with it! Not bad for $29.95...check it out at www.SpiceStack.com. Happy cooking!