WCC 3 -- Hanger Steak with Wild Mushroom Demi-Glace Sauce

I'm trying a new format here. Instead of hiding the weekly recipes inside comments, I'm going to make a new entry for them.

Here's my recipe for the week:

Hangar Steak with Wild Mushroom Demi-Glace Sauce

Ingredients (serves 2):

1 Pound Dry Aged Hanger (rib eye) Steak, preferably 1.75- 2 inches thick, cut into two pieces
1/2 cup Brandy to flambe with

For the Mushroom Sauce:

1 oz Dry Porcini Mushrooms
1/2 Pound Cremini Mushrooms, sliced thin
5-6 Fresh Morel Mushrooms, sliced into strips
2 Large Shiitake Mushrooms, cubed
2 sprigs fresh Thyme
4 TS Unsalted butter
4 Shallots, minced
4 cloves Garlic, minced
3 cups Red Wine (I use Shiraz for this, but any bold red -- zin, cab, syrah, etc. would do)
2 TS veal Demi-Glace
Salt/Fresh black Pepper
Oil


Directions

2-4 Hours in advance:

Place 1 cup of wine and the dry porcinis in a zip lock bag with the steak, place in fridge until an hour before cooking, flipping it over occasionally to make sure the wine hits both sides of the meat.

Just before cooking:

Remove steak from fridge and let sit on counter to bring up to room temperature.
Pre-heat your oven to 300F

Sauté the mushrooms:

Heat a saute pan with oil and 1TS butter to slight smoke. Add 1TS each garlic and shallots and allow them to slightly brown.
Working in batches, saute the mushrooms until nice and browned adding some thyme to each batch, and replenishing oil and butter as needed.
Once the last batch is browned, add all the mushrooms back into the pan and season with salt and pepper -- it's important that you don't salt the mushrooms before this point -- they will sweat and not get browned properly!

Reserve the sautéed mushroom.

Heat the same pan to smoking hot. Remove the steak from the marinade and remove any porcinis that may have stuck on them -- reserve all pocinis and the wine in a bowl for the sauce. Add oil, or render some beef fat into the pan (preferable), and then sear the steaks. You only want to flip the meat once, and only when it's got a nice crust about 3-4 minutes per side for a 2-inch thick steak.

Once the meat is seared, place it directly on the rack in your 300F oven with a cookie sheet underneath. You don't want to place the meat on the cookie sheet, since that will let the meat stew in its own juices. Remove the steak from the oven when the internal temperature hits 120-125 for rare, 130 for medium-rare (anything more, don't bother with a dry-aged steak, it's a waste) and place in a clean pan. Pour 1/2 cup brandy over the steak and flambé until the fire dies down. Let the steaks rest on a wire rack with a little foil over them for 5 minutes.

Sauce:

Once the steaks are in the oven, add 1TS butter to the saute pan used for the steaks and mushrooms. Add the remaining shallots and garlic and quickly let them get translucent. As soon as they do (it'll be quick since you're working on a HOT pan), add the porcinis, the wine from the marinade and the other 2 cups of wine into the pan. Lower the heat to medium, and scrape all the browned bits at the bottom of the pan. Add 2 TS of veal (or beef) demi-glace into the pan and whisk until completely incorporated. Let the sauce reduce by a little more than a half -- you're looking for a deep mahogany color and it should be just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon lightly. Season with salt to taste and whisk in 2 TS butter until the sauce is shiny.

Plate steak with the sautéed mushrooms (reheat if necessary), and the sauce both under the meat and then spooned over.

Serve with some yukon gold heavy whipped (lots of cream and butter, that is) potatos and haricots verts with smoked almonds.

Happy Cooking!

Weekly Culinary Challenge 3

Ok, I'm back. This week's challenge is,

BEEF and RED WINE

Shouldn't be too difficult. :D

Happy Cooking!