Summer cookbook: Charlotte Ree’s steak with pepper sauce
Cooking a beautiful big piece of meat like this is a privilege, not an everyday convenience. Make sure you have your exhaust fan on its highest setting.
The idea of my last meal has long appealed to me. In fact, it is question I ask on almost every first date I have been on and at every dinner party I host: what would you like to be your last meal? I am a country girl at heart and so my go-to last meal would be a beautiful steak on the bone, with pepper sauce. I specify steak on the bone because one of the greatest loves of my life is to gnaw leftover meat directly from the bone.
Alongside the steak would be my answer to the fact that I love vegetables but loathe salad. A flavourless bowl of leafy greens is such an immense disappointment to me. This is my delicious compromise, knobs of butter and all!
It would be joined by a filthy martini, and a glass of champagne, and finished off with a wobbly, chewy, country-style custard tart.
Cooking a beautiful big piece of meat like this is a privilege, not an everyday convenience. You will probably want to make sure that you have your exhaust fan on its highest setting and your smoke alarm temporarily removed to avoid setting off your apartment building’s fire alarm and causing a mass evacuation and a potential $2000 fine, as I once did.
● 600g rib eye steak, on the bone
● Extra-virgin olive oil
● Sea salt flakes
● Freshly ground black pepper
● 1 garlic clove, crushed with the palm of your hand
● 1 small French shallot (eschalot), finely chopped
● 1 sprig thyme
● 1 tbsp salted butter
● 1 tsp black peppercorns, coarsely crushed
● 1 tbsp cognac
● ¼ cup thickened cream
Salad
● 2 tbsp salted butter
● 2 garlic cloves, crushed
● 60g frozen peas, thawed, or fresh snow peas, halved
● 120g leafy greens
● Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
● Zest and juice of 1 lemon
Method
Before you start, make sure you bring your meat to room temperature, pat it dry, and season it generously by rubbing with a drizzle of olive oil and a big sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper.
Make sure your cast-iron frying pan is placed on high heat and piping hot (smoking even) before you begin – this helps with caramelisation and creates a deliciously crispy crust. When cooking, you want to aim to achieve a medium-rare result and can do so by cooking a 3cm thick steak for 8 minutes. Cook it any further and your meat will be tough. To cook it evenly, you want to make sure you are turning it every 2 minutes. If your steak has a fat cap, use tongs to stand it on its side and cook for 3 minutes on each side.
Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the garlic, shallot, thyme and butter and cook, basting the steak continuously for 2 minutes. Transfer the steak to a chopping board and leave your meat to rest for 5-10 minutes before slicing.
Meanwhile, to make your pepper sauce, add the crushed black peppercorns to the pan containing the garlic, shallot, thyme and butter, stirring until fragrant. Remove the pan from the heat and add the cognac, lighting with a lighter to evaporate. This often involves much shrieking and jumping around on my part; it is very exciting. Then add the thickened cream, return the pan to the heat and bring to a simmer to thicken the sauce.
For the salad, melt the butter in a large saucepan over low heat, add the garlic and stir until softened and fragrant. Stir through the peas or snow peas. Add the leafy greens and cook, stirring, until slightly wilted. Season with salt and pepper, add the lemon zest and juice, and stir through.
To serve, slice your steak against the grain (look for the parallel lines of muscle fibre that run down the meat and slice perpendicular to them) and place on a serving plate. Return any juices from the steak to your sauce and stir them through, then pour the sauce over your sliced steak, with the sinful salad alongside. Season with a little more sea salt. I am a salt fiend after all.
Charlotte Ree is a devoted home cook and food lover. Her book, Heartbake: A Bittersweet Memoir is out now. It’s part memoir, part recipe book and part joyous battle cry for those who find themselves lonely at any age, hungry for so much more from life.