My friend Charlyn introduced me to the Pioneer Woman blog. I clicked on the link at 10am. The first thing I saw was her recipe of the day… Steak au Poivre. Beautiful beautiful steak. I sat there and drooled… 2 hours before I could take my lunch. I didn’t think it was right for me to suffer alone and drool so I immediately forwarded the link to Jennifer. We both sat there and drooled. Well at least I think she drooled too. From her squawks of displeasure on IM followed with more food porn links to me made me think that she drooled too. 😀
For the next few days, I kept thinking about that steak… peppercorn sauce… crusty sear that cuts into a bloody medium rare. Nom nom nom… On Friday, I finally had enough. I got out of work and called Sam up to see if he was game for eating a steak with me. The Texan/Neanderthal/Caveman in him jumped for joy. I drove to Whole Foods Whole Paycheck and proceeded to buy our groceries. Can I say that the stars were aligned and the cards dictated that we were supposed to eat meat? The NY Strip was on sale… for a one day sale… of 7.99 a pound instead of the normal 17.99 a pound. OMG. NOM NOM NOM. I picked up two beautiful steaks and then I jumped for joy. I drove my cart around the store trying to figure out the sides. Since we were having cholesterol overload and Sam’s been giving me warnings about the amount of butter I use, I found these awesome potatoes that taste creamy and buttery without butter. I grabbed a bag full of oyster mushrooms and a bag of salad greens to help everything move along. Other ingredients were pretty standard and I already had on hand. I got through the checkout stand and proceeded to nearly get run over by some Asian guy driving a minivan going 50 MPH in the parking lot. Needless to say I was really tempted to chuck one of those buttercream potatoes at him but remembering that I just shelled out $2.79 per pound for those babies made me think twice. Damn Asian drivers!
I got home and quickly proceeded to cook our dinner. I put the potatoes on to boil and started prepping the various sauces and sides. Recipe links can be found at the end of this post. And yes… I finally got to use my itty bitty Grey Poupon. I knew it would come in handy some day… a few months ago when I jacked it from the room service condiment tray. I thought I had a regular size jar but somehow I think in the refrigerator clean-up/purge it might have gotten thrown out.
While I was whipping everything together, I looked up and saw Sam sitting at the dining table waiting for us to have dinner. I picked up the camera and feigned that I was taking pictures of the steak and snuck in a shot.
A short wait later… Voila!
NOM NOM NOM!!!
When I cooked this meal, I heavily salted my steak while I started the potatoes to boil first while making the garlic/buttermilk sauce to mix into the mashed potatoes. The steaks were left sitting out at room temperature basking in its salt rub for about half an hour to bring the temperature up a bit; that way when I threw it in the pan, the temperature difference wouldn’t be as great. Salting the meat and letting the sodium soak in helps the flavor. After I finished that, I started the mushrooms to roast in the pan while preheating my steak pan. By the time the steak was finished and the au poivre sauce was done, my mushrooms were done to a perfect roast. I love the detail of the texture on the last picture.
Vicky’s Magic Garlic Sauce
Garlic Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes
Garlic Pan Roasted Oyster Mushrooms
Steak Au Poivre