Bifteck Sauté Béarnaise

Tonight's to do:

• Pan sear the filet steaks
• Roast red fingerling potatoes
• Sauté spinach
• AND don't mess up the béarnaise

Continued after the jump...

Oh my... I made sure to read through all the recipes before I started. There's nothing worse than being half-way through, and realize, oh crap, I missed a step.

Pg 79 - figure out how to properly whip your egg yolks for the sauce.

Pg 85 - figure out how to make said sauce. 

Pg 293 & 295 - learn to properly sear the steaks...

Julia really does give good instructions, simple things I never thought of, like dry both sides of the steak with a paper towel in order to get the best brown sear. Who knew!? :) 

So I started... first prepping all the ingredients.

1. slice the fingerlings
2. mince the shallot
3. separate the egg from the yolk

After getting the potatoes in the oven to roast, I seared the steaks. With a small layer of butter/oil hot in the pan, I threw in the steaks, 3.5 minutes on each side. Don't mess when them, touch them once only to flip.

After the steaks were done and moved to a warm plate, I poured out the grease, and deglazed the pan with a little beef stock. And then... started on the feared béarnaise.

I was nervous about the sauce. I had made hollandaise before, but it had been years and with the help of a professional chef in culinary school.

Could I do it on my own? Well, I'll never know if I don't try.

I reduced the base of the sauce, wine vinegar, white wine, shallots, tarragon, and the steak reduction. Then after draining the reduced liquid from the shallots and herbs, I started whipping the yolks. Using another great tip from Julia, I slowly heated the yolks in a double boiler to keep them from turning into scrambled eggs, adding in the cold butter small pieces at a time to help it thicken. Moving into slowly dripping melted butter into the mixture and whipping in the original base reduction until, voilá! 

And any person who has attempted to orchestrate a meal knows, at the same time you are whipping your delicate béarnaise sauce, you must also be finishing up the rest of your meal so it all turns out at the same time. HAHA, easier said than done... but I managed.

I got the roasted potatoes out of the oven, and into a pan of sautéed spinach just as everything was finishing up.

It was delicious, I wish you all could have tasted it. :D I only hope my next attempt at mastering french cooking goes this well! Poaching eggs, apparently not the easiest thing to do...

(Recipes courtesy of Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking vol. 1)