Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Season Eleven Finale! Steak Au Poivre and Pommes Aligot!

We made it!

Welcome back to Sunday Gravy and welcome back football!

Hope your Labor Day weekend has been good.

Wish I could say that I’m sad our offseason cooking adventures are coming to an end. But…

This hasn’t been the easiest season of Sunday Gravy for multiple reasons.

I think it’s getting better? I think?

We had some good recipes this year for sure. I’m not linking to all of them or give you the season’s greatest hits but this season was easily my most personally involved season in regards to original recipe construction. Sure a couple of these episodes are similar in menu construction but I’m not sorry about my personal growth as a home cook and my recent ability to flavor balance? Flavor create? I don’t know how to properly phrase it. I’ll just say that I’m a vastly improved cook compared to when we started this whole thing back in 2015.

I now have the ability to tweak recipes for improvement just by experience and intuition. With the added benefit of producing some fucking mind blowing menus over this past season.

Take this beauty as an example.

That was the one I called Charcoal Chicken.

I’ve now cooked this dish I’m gonna say 4 times? Because it’s fucking perfect.

That yogurt sauce thing in the picture is something that I’m inordinately proud of. That shit there? I think that’s my very own addition to the entire culinary world. Not the exact recipe itself but the idea of having a yogurt based sauce that basically “mirrors” the flavor profile and is then served alongside freshly grilled meats. I can do it for any marinated or seasoned meat of any type of animal flesh and it works.

Every time.

In addition to the yogurt sauce, there’s also the pickled onion and the hummus. Yes, I bought the hummus at the store but the idea is to bring all of these other added elements to completely elevate this meal from “That’s some really good chicken” to a meal that I’ve now cooked four times in a couple of months.

I’m not trying to brag here, I’m more showing how fucking exhilarated I am that these past 11 years of writing Sunday Gravy taught me to have the confidence to try new things, experiment with recipes and be as creative as possible without fear.

You’ll see a little of that today as well.

Going to share a recipe today that was clearly inspired by our trip to Paris in April.

We are making a classic Steak Au Poivre and we will be serving it with pommes aligot.

Pommes aligot is a whipped potato dish that includes butter, cream and a LOT of French cheese. It most definitely does NOT suck.

Damn skippy this was paired with a red wine.

Let’s do this.

recipe is mine.

A good steak au poivre should feature a green peppercorn brandy/cognac sauce for the steak.

Those are Spanish peppercorns and yes, they could easily be mistaken for capers. They are very different in taste however.

This will be an agressively peppered dish today.

Crush up some black pepper for our peppercorn crust on the steak.

Spread the crushed pepper out on a surface so we can place the steak right on top.

Right now we’re just doing our “Sous” shit by prepping everything for the meal first.

For the pommes we will be adding a new cheese to the Sunday Gravy cheese arsenal.

Comté!

Drop that cheese knowledge on us Wiki!

“Comté, also known as Gruyère de Comté, is a hard cheese made from unpasteurised cow’s milk in eastern France. Comté is based on artisanal techniques developed in the Jura Mountains 1,000 years ago. It is a cooked and pressed cheese made daily from raw cow’s milk partially skimmed. It was manufactured seasonally and had to be kept for many months to ensure a source of food for the farmer’s family throughout the cold season.”

That’s the good shit right there. Thanks Wiki!

You can clearly see the aging from the outside rind of the cheese.

Remember; the rind is always edible but it’s up to the eater if they choose whether or not to eat it. I cut the rind off since we will be using this as a melting cheese.

Shred it up.

Cover and refrigerate for now.

Let’s get a gander at our steak.

You know things are fucked when a steak is the same cost per pound as aged French cheese.

This dish can also be made with filet mignon as the cut or strip steak but I basically just felt like having a ribeye.

We are going to start our steak by dry brining it with some salt.

Season liberally with salt and let it rest on a rack, uncovered in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Please note the MacGyver like use of my cheese shredder taking on new life as a drying rack. Thought that was kind of clever.

While the steak is resting let’s go ahead and boil our potatoes.

You can cook these in advance because we will finish the potato dish by reheating and adding in the butter, cream and our cheese.

Oh yeah, Yukon gold potatoes would be a nice touch here if you prefer.

For our cream sauce we will need a shallot.

Sorry, a “Minced” shallot please.

Thank you.

I bought a new kitchen toy recently.

Because it’s a real pain in the ass to have to drag out my stand mixer just to whip up a batch of potatoes.

Let’s set up our mise en place for the steak prep. Get everything prepped and ready.

Once again I cooked a second protein because I was the only steak guy at this meal.

 For our sauce, in addition to the shallot we will also need some of this…

Cognac would also work perfectly here.

Let’s apply the pepper crust to just one side of our steak today.

Yep, we really want this fucker crusted up.

We start by adding oil to our smoking hot cast iron skillet and then cooking the steak, pepper crust side down.

Add in a tablespoon of butter, one mashed clove of garlic and a few thyme sprigs for basting.

Baste both sides thoroughly. I went about 6 minutes per side today.

Look at that crust.

Remove the steak, cover with some foil and let rest for at least 5 minutes.

This gives us time to quick cook our other protein.

After cooking the chops, keep that heat going and we will start to build our peppercorn cream sauce.

Add the shallot to the meat juices in the skillet.

Now we will be adding in 2 or so tablespoons of brandy. You can turn the heat off if you don’t want to perform your stage show.

Not for us though.

Fire in the hole!

You can do better than that!

There we go!

You can immediately extinguish the flame by adding in 1/2 cup of beef stock. I just like the rush of cooking with fire so I let it burn off the alcohol.

Add in the stock and the peppercorns, maybe half a tablespoons worth of green peppercorns. I left the peppercorns whole since they’re already brined and a little softened up.

Reduce by about half then add in 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1 teaspoon of dijon mustard.

Reduce down to desired thickness and you’re in business. Be sure to stir pretty consistently.

Let’s address our mashed potatoes now by putting them back on a low heat then adding in 1-2 tablespoons of butter, 1/3 cup of heavy cream and our shredded cheese.

Stir repeatedly and fiercely. Put your elbow into it.

Heat until completely blended and bubbly.

Let’s see if we got a good “Pull” on these.

Close enough.

I’m fucking hungry over here.

Ideally these have a really long, pronounced cheese pull. You can add in a touch of mozzarella to complete that effect.

Spoon out some sauce for service.

Yep, this will be our “dunking” bowl.

Feed me dammit.

Dear God.

Look at that crust again.

Perfect.

It really IS that damn good. The pepper is front and center, that cream sauce is rich and decadent and tangy and goddamn delicious and you can put yourself in a fucking food coma with those potatoes alone. Those are magnificent.

Hey! Yet another new potato prep for you!

Holy shit this was an incredible meal. Again we go back to a balance of flavors. I could have made a goddamn baked potato with this steak prep and it would have been great but it wouldn’t have been this.

Each element of the meal works towards making this the sum of its parts.

I learned that shit from Sunday Gravy. Eleven fucking years of Sunday Gravy. That’s nuts.

Today’s “fun” holidays courtesy of A Bit Of Good News: “September 6 is National Coffee Ice Cream Day, National Pet Rock Day, National Read A Book Day and Fight Procrastination Day.”

You’ve been given your marching orders.

And that’s a wrap!

We’ve got real NFL Sunday action for you starting next week. Thanks to all of the feature writers and “Offseason” folks who are here to give you entertaining content and to keep your eyeballs on us when there’s no football.

I’ll be watching with the rest of you next week and going forward.

I really appreciate you folks tuning in and reading this. Love you all dearly.

Every single one of you made me a better cook. 

Be well and see you in the comment section.