Friday Night Steak Dinner

The Williams Sonoma catalogue sitting on my night stand boasted steakhouse recipes and all the utensils to cook them. It kind of got me in the mood to cook steak, and I happened to have a couple Hearst Ranch New York strips in the freezer.

I almost always cook steak the same way. I pre-heat the oven to 500º with an iron pan (this time I used my Le Creuset grill pan) inside. When the oven and the pan are super hot I put the pan on the stove over a high flame (make sure the fan is on) and lay in the steaks coated with olive oil and a crust of cracked peppercorns and sea salt. The steaks sear on each side and I pop them in the oven to cook through -- tonight it took about three minutes on a side and six minutes in the oven for these bone in steaks. I always let them rest for three to five minutes before slicing.

I generally melt some flavored butter on the steaks. But tonight, for a little something extra I whipped up a mushroom red wine sauce for the meat. I melted about four TB of butter and two TB of olive oil in a pan and added one thinly sliced leek and several sliced cloves of garlic. When the garlic started to color I added in a good quantity of fresh thyme and about 1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms. I let the mushrooms soften in the butter and then poured in about 3/4 cup of red wine and 1/2 cup of chicken stock and let the sauce bubble and reduce while the steak cooked. I stirred in a dash of balsamic vinegar for a little sweetness and let the pan simmer over low heat. To finish the sauce I swirled in a drizzle of cream and seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked until combined.

The salad came straight from our front yard -- picked about 10 minutes before I served dinner and dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Steak dinner --- a good way to start the weekend.