French Cooking Class Part IV

This is the final installment in a series of posts describing the French Cuisine cooking class I recently attended at Plate It Up! a gourmet kitchen tools store here in Glendale AZ and taught by Chef Patrick Karvis.

You can read Part 1 here.
You can read Part 2 here.
You can read Part 3 here.

For the final course, Chef Patrick showed us how to prepare Steak Au Poivre. The steak is prepared using a sear-roasting technique and then using the fond to create a pan sauce.

I again failed to take photos, so I recreated the dish with a few variations tonight at home. While we used New York Strip in the class, I chose to use a small whole beef tenderloin cut into sections. For demi glace, I buy Demi Glace Gold at my local gourmet supermarket.

Steak Au Poivre

4 steaks, New Your Strip of Beef Ternderloing cut into pieces or similar
1/2 cup demi glace
1/2 cup Jim Beam
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teasp[oon minced shallots
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 375F. Season one side of the steaks with salt and pepper. Go heavy on the pepper. Put 2 tablespoons tea oil or other high smoke-point oil in a saute pan over high heat. Put the steaks into the saute pan peppered side down and season the other side. Let the steaks cook for about 4 minutes. When they release easily from the pan it is time to turn them over. Cook the other side for about four minutes. Put the entire pan into the oven. Using an instant-read thermometer, remove the steaks when they have reached the desired temperature (see this post for temperatures).

Remove the steaks from the pan, put them on a plate and tent with foil. Return the pan to medium-high heat. Add the shallots and garlic. Add the Jim Beam and deglaze the pan. Allow the sauce to reduce for about a minute and then ignite. When the flames have extinguished add the demi glace and heavy cream. Allow the sauce to reduce for another minute. Add the butter, thyme, and parsley. Pour over steaks.

Shown here served with buttered peas and brown-braised onions just like Julia made.