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Old 10-16-2007, 12:19 AM
TheRempel TheRempel is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 1,963
Default Re: Cooking a girl dinner

Personally I think if you have any reservations about under or overcooking chicken you should go for steak, unless she has some aversion to red meat.

Stupidly easy awesomely tasty recipe for Steak au Poivre:

Go to the butcher and get two nice tenderloin steaks, they should be about 1.5" thick and 3-4" in diamter. Grab some heavy cream and liquid suitable for deglazing at the grocery story while you are at it (cognac is best).

Sprinkle some salt on both sides of the steak.
Coarsely grind a fair amount of black pepper on a small plate and press each of the steaks into it on both sides. You want the steaks to look as though they are breaded with pepper, but don't worry about the sides.

Put a non-teflon pan (I use stainless steel, make sure it is NOT non stick) on medium high heat and throw a couple pats of butter in the pan along with a tbsp of olive oil (the oil will reduce the smoke point of the butter).

Once the pan is nice and hot, throw the steaks in and DO NOT under any circumstances touch them for four minutes. Do not move or otherwise [censored] with them. Once four minutes is up, flip them over and cook another four minutes. When they are done, move them to a plate and loosely cover with foil so they can rest and finish cooking while you make the sauce. These directions are for medium rare (135-145 degrees internally), if you prefer a little more well done add another minute to the cooking time for each side.

Now time for deglazing. Pour out 1/3 cup of your cognac and get a barbecue lighter ready. Make sure you have a good pot lid and possibly a fire extinguisher at hand. The first time i did this it made a fireball that shot six feet in the air because the recipe called for 2/3 cup of yak. Remove the pan from the heat and away from anything flammable, pour in the cognac and quickly light it with the barebecue lighter. You should get a quick flash of flame that burns out after 5-10s. Any longer than that and you probably need to smother it with the pot lid.

Once the majority of the alcohol has burned away, return it to the stove and lower the heat to medium. Grab a wisk and scrape the awesome brown stuff off the bottom of the pan. Add 1 1/2 cups of the heavy cream and keep the sauce at a low simmer for 5-8 minutes. When it's done it should have reduced quite a bit and should thickly coat the back of a spoon. Season the sauce to taste with a little bit of salt and pepper, throw the steaks back in the pan, then plate them and serve. Tastes [censored] awesome.
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