Dinner Tonight: Steak Au Poivre

As the boys and I were shopping for Huevos Rancheros ingredients on Friday, there was a man cooking something in front of the butcher's counter. My oldest son liked what he smelled and wanted a sample. He took one and my youngest did also. The man told them it was Steak Au Poivre. Steak Au Poivre is pepper steak with Brandy sauce, I saw no pepper or sauce on what the kids ate in Harris Teeter, but they said they liked it. I asked if they might want to try the real thing and they said, "Sure."

If you have read previous posts you know that I don't cook to my kid's tastes, I cook to mine and my husband's tastes and hope that the kids will catch on. I like to introduce new tastes, if they like it great, if they don't, they need to try to eat enough to not go to bed hungry. We don't enforce any sort of clean plate club, it would make all of us miserable. With all of this said, I was skeptical of either of the boys taking more than a bite of pepper encrusted steak!

The recipe called for 3/4 inch to 1 inch thick strip steak, I bought two filets that were nearly 2 inches thick and sliced them in half so they were 1 inch thick steaks. We cooked them as directed, and while great for the kids, I found them a little overdone, more medium than medium rare. A side note, the kitchen gets quite smoky while searing the steak. The sauce came together beautifully.

We served the steak with baked sweet potato and asparagus. I was surprised when the boys had taken a few bites of steak and did not complain about too much pepper. Eventually though, they both said they did not like the sauce. Sous Chef and I loved the sauce.

The recipe I used was from epicurious, it was originally published in, the now sadly defunct, Gourmet magazine in 1955. As I was eating tonight, my copy of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" caught my eye. I wondered why I searched web sites instead of using that as a reference. It turns out the recipes were very similar, the main difference was that Julia's recipe did not call for heavy cream in the sauce, but twice as much butter. Our's could have been close to restaurant quality for half the price if only the beef wasn't a tad overcooked, but it was still fabulous!