As promised, here is the second, and final post for
Whisk Wednesdays this week.
The recipe prepared for this week is from Class 17, Part 4 and is Pavés de Rumsteak au Poivre Vert (Sirloin Steaks with Green Peppercorns). It can be found in the cookbook Le Cordon Bleu At Home on pages 127-128. The recipe for the potatoes is also found in the book on page 130.
The recipe is simple, straightforward, and delicious. All votes were highly in favor of repeating this on a semi-regular basis. The only thing I changed was that I did not use veal stock in the sauce. You already know my thoughts on veal, so I won't repeat that now, but I did have beef stock and chicken stock on hand, and since veal stock is lighter than beef stock, I combined the two stocks I had 50/50 to come up with a nice sort of pseudo-veal stock. It was very tasty actually, so I might use this little technique in some other things I make around here.
We like our steaks rare, so the pinkish bit on the plate in the photo would be steak juices and not sauce juices, which were a creamy tan in color. I had some mushrooms on hand, so I sauteed those and tossed them in the sauce also at the last moment.
The green peppercorns were a new experience. I have the blended peppercorn mix (red, green, white, black, pink) on hand and use it most often, but I have never had the green peppercorns on their own like this in a sauce. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful...they don't have the bitterness of the black peppercorns, and they have a more gentle punch of pepper. Very nice.
A cute little side here about the peppercorn sauce: Matt said, "What are these little green things in this sauce?" I responded and he said, "Well, that explains it! I thought they were little bitty green peas and when I bit into one, it was clearly not a little bitty green pea!" Gotta love a teen who is willing to go with the flow of being an agreeable taste tester for new cooking forays, don't you? Once he figured out the taste difference, he was perfectly happy to eat any and all the sauce on his plate and enjoyed the green peppercorns immensely. (Permission granted to post this little aside, btw.)
The recipe in the book was accompanied by the potatoes you see on the plate, basically sauteed potato slices, so I made those as well as my guys are big fans of these types of potatoes. Mark grilled some asparagus for us to complete the dish.
The only other change I would make would be in portion size as 6 ounces of steak is way more than we need...Matt and I were happy with 4 ounces and Pippin and Vash were delighted to have the other two ounces from each of ours for their dinner last evening. You hear that, Remy? The boys got LCB steak last night!
And, because Buddy likes to refer to this as "Whiskey Wednesdays," there was, in the sauce besides the stock, a little cream, and the peppercorns, a small amount of cognac to add a bit of depth of flavor...try not to leave it out as it makes a big difference, not to mention that it is so much fun to light things in pans on fire!
If you would like to see how the other Whisk Wednesday members fared in this class, click here, and then on the Whisk Wednesdays connect to individual bloggers, or better yet, come and join us! Shari has the ingredients posted on her site at the click, so while we can't post the recipe instructions, you can at least look at the ingredients, and I bet you can figure out a lot of it from there.
Upcoming schedule:
Class 18 Les Grillades et les gratins (Grilling and browning)
• Class 18, Part 1 (Post on Wednesday, November 12, 2008):
Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style) pages 158-159