Steak Flambe?

Ok, so maybe not so Flambe, but that's what it was suppose to be. And once again, I'm a day late and a dollar short with my Recipes to Rival recipe this month. As if that weren't bad enough, I didn't realize until we were all done eating that I forgot to take a picture. So sadly, there will be no pictures this month. :o(

The hosts for month of March were Temperance of High on the Hog and Shawnee of Delishes Delishes. The recipe they choose for us was Steak Diane Flambe. (However, the flambe part was not an actual requirement.)

Here is the recipe. At the end I will tell you what I did differently and what we thought of it.

Ingredients

For the steaks
4x85g beef medallions
1 tsp Dijon mustard
freshly ground salt and pepper

For the sauce
1 tsp Butter, clarified
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp Shallots, finely chopped
50g button mushrooms, finely sliced
1 tbsp lemon juice
125ml double cream
1 tbsp Chives, snipped
50ml Brandy

Method 1. Rub the medallions of beef with the mustard, season with salt and pepper and set aside.
2. Heat a large frying pan over a medium heat and when hot, add the clarified butter and Worcestershire sauce.
3. Add the shallots and mushrooms, and push to the centre of the pan. Arrange the medallions around the edge. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring and tossing the mushroom mixture as you go. If you prefer your steak well done, give it an extra minute or 2.
4. Add the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
5. Turn the steaks over and pour in the cream and chives. Tilt the pan slightly (away from you) and pour in the brandy at the far end. Now turn up the heat to high so that the brandy ignites. Swirl the sauce around in the pan and turn off the heat.
6. Put the medallions on 4 plates, pour over the sauce and serve.

Disclaimer:We do not require that you flambé, if you choose to flambé and burn down your kitchen, don't sue us. If you choose to flambé try and get a picture (I recommend getting someone to help). Remember when playing with fire keep a fire extinguisher close and never use water on a cooking fire.

Here are some links to help, an Online conversion calculator , and a guide to flambéing.

My local grocery store didn't have any medalion steaks of any kind, so I got petite steaks and they worked just great for this. I did have to cook them a bit longer though as I think they were probably a little thicker. Also, the same store didn't have any shallots or brandy. So I used onion and vodka. I also used green onion tops in place of the chives (I would have prefered chives, but the green onions worked great too) and added garlic with the onion and mushrooms. I also used more butter than the recipe called for, because you can never have too much butter.

The falmbe didn't work for me. I'm not sure why. It's something I've never done before, so I need to try again sometime. I can't it when something doesn't go the way I want ti to in the kitchen. I did cook the sauce longer to help cook out the alcohol since it didn't flambe.

This was another big hit. Jade hasn't tried it yet, but I know she will love it since it's red meat smothered in a creamy mushroom sauce. I think I might make it again next week so she can try it since she was spending the night with a friend.

This is a recipe that will be going in the archives here at home. Something that I hope to be able to teach my girls to make, and my son if he wants to cook. So try it and enjoy! Oh, and if you aren't interested in doing the flambe at all, just leave out the brandy all together.