steak au poivre + simple truffle frites
Last January, with just enough notice after the new year to half-pack a bag and get my ass to the LA airport, my work sent me and two coworkers on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to France. The two of them love an impulse adventure as much as I do, and after a 16-hour flight we all agreed: why go home when we could just stay there?
So, we headed to Paris. A small flat in the Marais served as our (self-financed) crash zone for a whirlwind 48 hours, nearly all of which was spent traipsing around the cobblestone streets in big coats, eating French food and drinking natural wines from the Loire Valley.
Up front we’d agreed we’d each pick one thing we most wanted to do, and to do those three things together. One wanted to go to Sacre Couer, so we hiked through Montmartre all the way to the top through the red light district and then back down to the Marais. The other wanted to go to La Cave á Michel, a standing-only wine bar that did not open as early as we thought and which we then proceeded to squat in front of, freezing to death on the curb, for nearly an hour while we waited. Both were well worth it.
My choice was to have the city’s best steak frites au poivre, which involved a cross-town trek to the 14th to a 10-table petit bistro called Severo Bar that I’d found years earlier on the internet and saved. We’d already had some wine to go with some crusty baguette and barnyard-funky goat brie we’d bought at a small grocery, and got there late for dinner even on Paris time. The maître d’ only let us into the tiny dining room, the last table of the night, because one of the three of us who was not me asked very nicely in French. (Turns out he’s the owner.)
You don’t get much of a choice at Le Severo, which I love. French service and cooking is about pure confidence in the quality and correctness of what you have to offer, which is why the freshly butchered steak comes at only two temperatures: bleu (basically raw, and I think what I ordered?), or le saignant (blood-rare). There are only a few cuts; I chose filet au poivre, crusted with peppercorns and smothered in a cognac-peppercorn cream sauce and arranged next to a pile of shatteringly-crisp-but-still-fluffy frites. It was bloody, buttery, and tender, exactly as I’d romanticized steak frites to taste in France, and not quite like any version I’d made before at home.
It’s now the basis for a steak frites recipe I’ve been messing with since I got back, and what I’m finally French-confident enough in to teach you today. The steak is basic, but the sauce—which you effectively light on fire—is anything but. The frites aren’t really the main event here, but these (based on Smitten Kitchen’s technique) couldn’t be any simpler to make: just potatoes, oil, and salt, started cold in a Le Creuset (trés Français!) and with a tiny touch of optional truffle. It’s excellent Friday-night-in food, an intimate and sensorial treat, as easy to make solo in a half portion as it is to cook together with a partner or friend.
You rarely realize that you’re experiencing a “once in a lifetime” thing at the time. It dawns on you later, after it’s so far behind you that you finally understand that you’ll never be able to replicate the circumstances needed to repeat it. Impulse-traveling with people in close quarters you may not have chosen to otherwise, navigating together in a language not your own with no plan, can go really badly—ask me how I know—but in this case, it was a surprise highlight of what would quickly become a very dark year, one that’s all the more special to reflect on now knowing just how much the odds are stacked against ever experiencing it the same way again. We couldn’t be further away.
But I love to cook in part because it grants me the power of teleportation to another time, to another place. These recipes from my memory, though, feel more like a kind of resurrection: a long-gone memory reanimated now in my kitchen, au poivre puddles on the island and fryer oil cooling on the stove, with one lone tea light flickering softly in the saignant glass of a bottle of red wine from the Loire Valley.
RECIPE
Inspired by the iconic steak frites at Bar Severo in Paris, this at-home version gets pretty damn close: lean steak is crusted in coarse peppercorns and seared hard in a cast iron pan, then smothered in a cognac-peppercorn cream sauce. Serve with frites. Surprise!
Effortful time: 30 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes (includes the steak resting process, pre and post cooking, you can shorten the former if you need)
Serves: 2 — but easily double-able for four, or halve-able for one
YOU NEED
For the steaks:
2x 8-12oz lean steaks, like filet mignon or hanger
1 tbsp. neutral oil, I use grapeseed but avocado, safflower, sunflower, or any other high-heat oil is great
1 tbsp. butter
A LOT of extra coarsely cracked black peppercorns (1/2 a cup or so; I prefer Tellicherry)— I do this using the loosest possible setting on my pepper grinder
Ample kosher or sea salt
Flake salt, to finish
For the au poivre sauce:
1 tbsp. butter
1 small shallot, finely minced
More of those very coarsely cracked black peppercorns, about 2 tbsp worth
1 tsp. dijon mustard
1/4 cup cognac or brandy
1/4 cup beef broth (I only ever use Better than Bouillon in hot water for this)
1/2 cup heavy cream
For the frites:
1 1/4 lbs. yukon gold potatoes, about 3 medium-sized potatoes
4 cups neutral, cheap oil, like canola; don’t worry, the fries absorb only a little bit of this
Sea salt
A few shakes of truffle powder, if desired; if you’ve never tried this, get yourself some Sabatino Truffle Zest and thank me later
MAKE IT
Steaks au poivre:
Get prepped. 40 minutes to an hour before you plan to cook, salt and rest steaks at room temperature. Shortly before cooking, preheat the oven to 350°F, just in case.
Pepper the steaks. Using a grinder at the very coarsest setting, roughly crack black peppercorns all over each side of the steaks and pat into the meat to make a crust. They should come out of the grinder in halves and quarters.
Sear the steaks. Heat oil in a heavy searing skillet, preferably cast iron, until totally screaming hot (switch on your vent hood, too). Put in the steaks and let cook for 3 minutes on the first side, or until you can strongly smell toasted pepper in the pan.
Baste the steaks. Very carefully turn the steaks to keep the crust intact. Add the butter and let it melt. Baste the steaks while cooking, another 3 minutes. Quickly use tongs to turn them and sear the sides.
Transfer steaks to the oven. Turn off the heat, and transfer steaks to a rack set on a small sheet pan. If the internal temp registers 120°F for rare (125°F for medium-rare), you’re done! If not, which is more likely the case, put them into the oven and proceed with the recipe til they hit the right temp on a thermometer. Cover in foil and rest for 10 minutes before serving.
Make the au poivre sauce. While the steaks finish up, add minced shallots and more roughly cracked peppercorns, to your taste. Cook on medium heat until shallots are soft, about 2 minutes. Kill the heat for a moment and very carefully add the cognac or brandy. Don’t light yourself on fire, this can turn into an inferno quickly if you keep the flame on and you probably want to keep your eyebrows. Re-ignite the burner; the alcohol will burn off fast.
Finish the sauce. Once the alcohol is nearly gone, add the beef broth and scrape up all the brown bits. Stir in the dijon and cream and cook over medium heat for 6-8 minutes or until sauce is thick enough to coat a spoon and has a nice light caramel color.
Frites:
Prep the potatoes. Rinse and scrub the potatoes; no need to peel. Dry them well with paper towels. Cut each potato roughly into a rectangular shape by cutting off the 2 “faces” of the potato as well as the two ends, which can then also be cut into fries. Cut the rectangle potato chunk into thicc matchsticks. They don’t need to be perfect! I’m not and neither are my fries. ~*
Start the frites. Put potatoes into a large, deep pan with a good amount of surface area to give the fries room—I used a 3.5 qt Le Creuset cast iron braiser for this, which is wide and shallow—and cover the potatoes with the oil.
Boil, then gently simmer, the frites—but do not stir them. Turn the burner to high until the oil starts boiling. This takes about 5 minutes. Then cook 15 minutes more. Truly: leave them alone until they are fully golden.
Stir the fries. Once they are fully golden, you can stir to loosen any stuck ones. Cook for 3-5 more minutes or until the fries are crispy and golden.
Season the fries. Using tongs, move the fries over to a paper-towel lined sheet pan. Salt immediately and shake truffle powder over, if using. Toss with tongs to distribute.
To finish:
Plate a pile of truffly frites next to each steak. Sprinkle the steak with flaky salt. Pour au poivre sauce over the steak; some of the drippings will get into the frites and this is destiny. Serve the rest of the sauce on the side and open up something luxe to drink.
A note on cadence:
There’s a lot of math involved to get things out at the same time equally hot and fresh. Steaks take about 35 minutes from the moment they first hit the pan, including their resting time. The fries also take 25-30 minutes from the time they boil, and 10 minutes to hit that point, so 35-40 minutes. I can’t lie: the best way to do this is with a partner, with one of you making steaks and the other attending to the fries. I follow the steps in this order:
Preheat the oven.
Once pre-heated, heat your pan for steaks. Get the frites in the pot and ready to go, but don’t turn them on yet.
When your steak pan is hot, turn on the heat for the frites.
Immediately sear the steaks.
By the time the steaks are in the oven, the frites should be boiling.
Finish the sauce over low heat while the steaks are in the oven; keep warm, stirring, while the fries finish.
Remember: you can tent the steaks for as long as you need, but you can’t re-freshen the fries!
