January 24th - Steak and potatoes

January 24th – Steak and Potatoes
I still am very much a steak and potato guy. I can’t eat it every night, but there are times when I still crave them both. I’m also a big fan of hash browns and hashes of various types. One of my favorite ways to cook potatoes is to cube them and then to cook them in oil with garlic, onions, thyme and sometimes red chili. Since the potatoes need the longest time, I usually add them first and cook them most of the way before adding some finely diced onions and garlic. Invariably they take longer than I think they should, but I still enjoy it immensely.
For the steak, I used a petit sirloin that we had. It’s a tough and often inelegant cut of meat, but if you cook it quickly so it gets a good sear but stays rare in the middle, it can be a nice beefy flavored cut. (If you cook I past medium-rare it can be tough and flavorless.) I didn’t do a pan sauce this time because I was hungry and just used salt and pepper before searing the steak in a cast iron pan.
A great steak deserves great red wine, but in this case I decided that a decent steak deserved a great wine. I love syrah and am glad that it’s being grown in more places, but the northern Rhone valley in France is still home to some of the world’s best syrahs. In the fine wine world, there are still some relative bargains to be had there. Crozes Hermitage is such a region. Although the wines don’t have the power of true Hermitage, they can be fantastic wines with a great sense of terroir. I had a 1996 La Guiraud Crozes Hermitage from Alain Graillot which had held up beautifully and was still fairly tannic and rich. It had deep dark berry notes, rich intensity and some earthy notes. It could have used a richer entrée, like a steak with a wild mushroom sauce or something else intense, but it was still fantastic with the beef. Pearls before swine? Maybe but entirely satisfying.

Steaks and Red Bordeaux

A lot of my favorite foods are bistro standards, and Steak Frites certainly ranks amongst my favorite Bistro foods. I wanted something like this but didn’t want to go through the frites process, so I decided to grill some steaks and do some oven roasted potatoes instead. Steak Frites are traditionally made with hangar steak, which is a chewy but tremendously flavorful cut from the end of the ribs (it’s actually part of the diaphragm). Anthony Bourdain describes it as being faintly kidney like and there is richness to it that makes that an apt description. It’s a great cut, but can get tough if it’s cooked beyond medium rare (although I have to wonder why anyone would cook a steak beyond medium rare.) Unfortunately, hangar steak is hard to find and is normally only available by special order.

I was in the mood for a bistro steak but also didn’t want to get bogged down in the whole frites issue, since good frites need to be deep fried twice. So I kep the bistro idea but changed the menu slightly. I found two sirloin tip steaks that were about 8 ounces each, that were from naturally raised corn-fed cattle. Sirloin tip is actually part of the round, and has great beef flavor, but, partly because of its leanness, it does tend to be a tougher cut, so it’ll never be the tenderest steak you’ll eat. I picked up some gorgonzola cheese, because I really like good blue cheese with grilled beef. I opted to roast some potatoes with olive oil and thyme and made sure that they got a good crust on all sides. On the side we had a roasted beet salad with some organic yellow beets. The were roasted until tender, then peeled, cut and tossed with sherry vinegar, olive oil and grated fresh ginger, which is a recipe I stole from a Jean-Georges Vongerichten recipe. We had some zucchini in the garden, plus a plethora of basil, and I had a few tomatoes from the farmers market that I sautéed all together to make a vaguely Provencal side dish. I grilled the steaks for about 4 minutes total (2 minutes per side) over high heat to get a decent char. They were medium-rare and had great taste.

With most bistro food, I’m generally partial to wine and I pulled out a big gun for this one: 1989 Ch Troplong Mondot from St Emilion in Bordeaux. I started with Bordeaux when I started collecting wine but after awhile I got into other wines, like Pinot Noir, and Rhone wines instead and for a while even eschewed Bordeaux. But I still have some 1986 and 1989’s stashed away, and it’s tough to beat great beef with Bordeaux. St Emilion is one of the areas of Bordeaux where Merlot takes precedence over Cabernet Sauvignon (Pomerol is the other one). 1989 was hot year and the wines tend to be very ripe flavored and a little alcoholic. This wine was still holding up well, but it seemed to be on its downward side of its peak. The nose opened up after about 20 minutes and was full of plum fruit, with some cedar notes as well. You could pick up a little bit of alcohol on the nose, but there was still enough ripe plum and dark currant fruit on the palate that the higher alcohol didn’t seem too noticeable. It had a very nice balance and, like many 1989’s seemed to have lower acidity than your typical Bordeaux. 1989 was a much hyped vintage and a lot of the wines tend to be big and overripe by Bordeaux standards but most of the1989’s I’ve had have been very good. This was a very good bottle, and while memorable, won’t go down as one of the best I‘ve had (although I’d gladly drink it again if I were ever offered it.) If I did have more of it, I would likely drink it fairly soon, because I don’t think it will get better with age. But, it was delicious with the steak and did make for a memorable meal. Tough to beat mature Bordeaux and grilled beef.