January 23, 2013 Dinner – Sautéed Steak, Mushrooms and Spinach in Cream Sauce and Buttered New Potatoes

January 23, 2013 Dinner – Sautéed Steak, Mushrooms and Spinach in Cream Sauce and Buttered New Potatoes

The lesson from this evening’s meal was a reminder that often times of adversity produce great art.

As I had mentioned in an earlier blog this week, last weekend I saw a cooking show by David Chang on PBS that featured the skillet sautéing of a thick porterhouse steak in butter, garlic and thyme.  The show made is sound like that was the best way to prepare an aged piece of beef.  So, after the show, Friday night, I went the meat drawer in our fridge and slit the top of the plastic wrapper on the two packages of rib eye steaks I had bought on Tuesday at Smith’s ($5.99/lb.) and let them sit open to the air for about one-half day, then I wrapped and froze five of them and left the thickest one in the meat drawer to age a bit more. 

Today was a day of difficulties in business for both Suzette and me, as well as the fact that Suzette had driven to Santa Rosa and back and was tired, so I decided to take the fact that my little truck where I keep my cushions was in the shop as an omen that I should stay home and cook so we could share each other’s company and air our respective difficulties and relax, rather than meditate.  Some forms of practice are of greater importance than others and food was of a higher level of importance for me tonight.

I had the steak and I had bought seven or eight lovely red potatoes at Pro’s last Thursday and we still had over one-half of the bag of spinach and a package of baby portabello mushrooms I had bought at Costco last week and the package of fresh shitake mushrooms I had bought at Ta Lin last Friday, so we decided to prepare the steak in the manner David Chang had demonstrated on TV and make creamed spinach with mushrooms and prepare buttered potatoes.

Suzette was happy to not have to go outside to grill and she suggested that we simply boil the potatoes and then toss them in butter and parsley.  I suggested that instead of making the creamed spinach the way we did last night by simply adding cream, that we make a proper béchamel sauce, so the flavor of the liquid ingredients could mix together better and to produce a more delicate sauce.  Suzette was up for that also. 

So at 6:15 p.m., when Willy left for a dinner engagement, Suzette, who had not eaten lunch, placed a cutting board and my 7 inch Sabatier knife on the table in the TV room where I prep while I fetched the potatoes.  I started by cleaning the new potatoes of all dirt and dark spots and rinsing them in water and then quartered them into triangular wedges and put them into a pot of water and Suzette started the potatoes boiling on the stove. 

Then I went to the garden and picked thyme that turned out to be dead and unusable and to the fridge in the garage for the bag of spinach.  So I went to the basement to fetch the bag of dried thyme I had harvested this Fall from the garden and a bottle of French Médoc (2009 Château Amour, Grand Vin de Bordeaux, from Civrac, Médoc, bought at Trader Joe’s on 12-2-2011 for $7.99) red wine, which Suzette immediately opened to let breath.

Suzette then placed two large skillets (a cast iron skillet for the steak and a non-stick skillet for the creamed mushrooms and spinach) on the stove and heated butter in each, while I cleaned four or five small cloves of garlic and cut them in half to release their oil and threw some garlic in each skillet and two or three sprigs of the dried thyme into the skillet Suzette had placed the steak.

I fetched the parsley and Suzette brought me the mushrooms and we selected 5 baby portabello and two shitake mushrooms and I sliced them and chopped five or six sprigs of parsley which then went into the non-stick skillet. While the mushrooms were sauteeing, Suzette made a béchamel sauce by cooking flour in hot butter in a small sauce pan and then whisking milk into the cooked butter and flour.  She then rinsed a large handful of spinach and placed that on the mushrooms and covered the skillet to steam the spinach.  When the spinach was half blanched Suzette added the béchamel sauce to it.    

In a couple of minutes, as I was chopping parsley to toss with the potatoes, Suzette started yelling that the steak was almost done and we were ready to eat.  So I brought my ½ cup of chopped parsley to the kitchen and she tossed it with the potatoes that she had tossed with butter and removed the steak to a wooden cutting board. 

Here is the secret recipe:  I saw that the béchamel sauce had thickened to a clotted paste and Suzette said, “Do you want to deglaze the pan drippings from the steak with white wine?”  I said, “Yes.” So Suzette asked me to fetch the PPI bottle of Camino Real Reisling in the fridge while she poured off the grease from the steak pan and removed the thyme sprigs and then deglazed the steak drippings by whisking ¼ cup of reisling in the pan of steak drippings to release their grip on the pan and put them into solution.  Then Suzette poured the deglazed sauce into the spinach and mushroom pan and stirred the spinach and sauce and then added a little more 2% milk to bring the béchamel back to a smooth creamy consistency.  This last little step of deglazing the steak pan drippings gave the béchamel a lovely beef and wine flavor that it would not otherwise have had and smoothed the béchamel sauce to a creamy consistency.  I love béchamel sauce, because it will accept any liquid and take on the flavor of that liquid.                         

So while I poured the wine and sliced the steak, Suzette finished the béchamel sauce and warmed two plates on the stove.  We then plated steak, potatoes and creamed spinach and mushrooms and had a lovely dinner. I could not imagine having a better meal in a New York steak house.

We were enjoying this Appellation Médoc Contrôlée wine, which was a smooth, pleasantly light, fruity accompaniment to the heavy buttery meal.  After we had finished, Suzette fetched the blue cheese and cut slices of whole grain bread and toasted them and I sliced blue cheese and ate it on the bread while Suzette spoke on the phone.  When Suzette returned she sliced blue cheese and melted it on the bread which was another great idea.

It seems that out of the adversity of her day, Suzette came up with two great new food recipe ideas that made this meal memorable.  Am I glad I stayed home.

In fact, this meal reminded me of my earliest steak dinners in Austin in 1966 and 1967.  On weekends my brother and I we would go to a grocery store named Kash N Karry around 32^nd and Guadalupe that had a full butcher shop and buy a thick rib eye steak or club steak of aged prime beef for about $2.00/lb.  Then we would go to the Bottle Shop on Red River around 15^th and buy a bottle of French château bottled haut médoc red wine for about $2.00 and sauté the steak and bake potatoes and garnish them with chopped scallions and butter and boil a green vegetable.   I had eaten great meals at home, because my mother was a gourmet cook, but these steak dinners in Austin were my earliest illumination of how my brother and I could, for not much money (around $5.00), create a dinner with the best beef available to anyone and great wine; and eat just like kings and rich folks.  

Voila!