Valentine's Day: Steak with Pink Peppercorn, Rosemary and Lemon Butter

At this time of the year, there's lots of talk about food for lovers, which interests me because (have you guessed?) I'm a lover of food. In particular, I'm a lover of steak and butter. This is what I might cook for my dearly beloved on 14th February, if he plays his cards right.

As the butter melts, the heat of the steak releases the pepper, lemon and rosemary aromas.

This recipe is quick and easy, but you will need a small heart-shaped biscuit cutter. (Unless you're not a romantic, in which case you can shape the butter into discs.) These cutters are available from good kitchen shops. Pink peppercorns are less easy to find, but well worth tracking down.

Pink peppercorns (via Wikimedia Commons) )

They have a sweetish taste quite distinct from black and green peppercorns, and are in fact not true peppercorns at all, being the fruit of Schinus terebinthifolius, a Brazilian flowering plant belonging to the cashew family, and also known as a Brazilian pepper tree, Christmas berry, or Florida holly.

My husband bought a bottle of these for me from Germany after a business trip three or four years ago, and they're still as pungent as they were when I first opened the bottle.

The papery seeds are a beautiful deep coral-pink and crush very easily under light pressure from the blade of a knife. I'm smitten by their lovely colour and aroma, and I think you will be too, but as pink peppercorns have been known to cause allergies and dermatitis in certain people, I advise you to eat one and wait for a few hours before inflicting them on your darling.

You can use any sort of good quality, well-matured steak here. I like a good, juicy piece of rump (and no Valentine's Day sniggers from the peanut gallery, please) or rib-eye or sirloin, with a nice marbelling of fat. Everyone has their own method for cooking steak, but I find the best way to achieve a crusty, well-caramelised outside and perfect rosy pinkness within is as follows:

• Don't marinate the steaks.
• Bring them to room temperature before you cook them. 
• Season the steaks with salt and pepper immediately before you cook them.
• Heat the oil until it's ferociously hot and shimmering, but not yet smoking.
• Lay the steaks in the shimmering oil and allow to cook for a minute and a half to two (depending on the thickness of the steak) without moving or prodding them. Turn them over with a pair of tongs when they're beautifully browned, and the add a knob of butter to the pan (see recipe, below). Cook for another minute and a half, basting frequently with the butter.
• If you're not confident about cooking steak, turn one of them over and sneakily cut a deep slit in its thickest part.  You will lose some juices from the steak by doing this, but the loss is minimal.
•  If the middle of the steak is a lovely dark pink, and you're looking for medium-rare, remove the steak from the heat immediately (it will continue to cook as it rests).
•  If it looks disturbingly bloody on the inside, give it a little longer.

I love to serve steak with a baked potato brimming with sour cream and chives (or a mixture of sour cream and yoghurt, just to keep heart attacks from the door), but this would also be nice with a zingy potato salad, or little new potatoes, or a pile of warm, buttery mash.

The salad leaves in the picture are mustard greens and red-vein sorrel leaves, both of which I grow in pots on my veranda.

---

Steak with Pink Peppercorn, Rosemary and Lemon Butter

2 well-matured rump, sirloin or rib-eye steaks
2 Tbsp  (30 ml) olive oil
salt and milled black pepper

For the flavoured butter:
4 Tbsp (60 ml) softened butter
12 fresh rosemary needles
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) pink peppercorns
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) finely grated fresh lemon zest

First make the butter. Put a handful of ice chips on a small plate, and place it in the freezer. Finely chop or snip the rosemary needles and gently crush the peppercorns using a mortar and pestle, or a rolling pin. Don't pound them too hard, or they'll turn to a paste.

Stir the rosemary, crushed peppercorns and fresh lemon zest into the butter, and mix well. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Take the plate with the ice out of the freezer and push the ice chips to one side. Place the heart-shaped cutter on the plate, and fill with the flavoured butter.

Smooth the top and place back in the freezer for 10 minutes, or until firm. Push the heart-shaped butter pat out of the mould and set to one side of the plate. Repeat the process to make a second heart-shaped butter piece. Reserve the remaining butter.

Heat the oil in a frying pan over a high heat. When the oil is very hot and shimmering, add the steaks and cook on one side until nicely browned and caramelised (see my notes, above). Flip the steaks over. Add any remaining flavoured butter to the pan, and, using a spoon, baste the steaks every twenty seconds. When the steaks are done to your liking, remove them from the pan and place on a plate to rest for 5 minutes.

Slide the steaks onto plates and top each one with a pat of flavoured butter. Serve immediately with green salad and a baked potato.

Serves 2.

Print Friendly

Parsnip, Potato and Cumin Cakes with Crème Fraîche and Chives

I love a parsnip. Partly because 'parsnip' is such a great word (it sounds like the tip of a pair of sharp scissors snicker-snacking a parson's robe) but also because this humble vegetable is so earthily delicious, so cheap, so nourishing and so easy to cook.

Crisp parsnip 'latkes' dolloped with crème fraîche.  

 It might not be the most alluring-looking vegetable, with its whiskers and scrawny legs, but it has a lovely, nutty flavour that I find quite addictive.

These pancakes are similar to latkes, but have a warm hint of cumin. I wouldn't consider making them if I didn't have a food processor, which makes the preparation so quick and easy. If you don't have a food processor, grate the ingredients by hand. If you have the patience.

I can't quantify the size of the potatoes or parsnips in this recipe, because I don't know how big yours are (that sounds rude; parsnippy snicker!). But the ratio of potato to parsnip should be roughly equal.

---

Parsnip, Potato and Cumin Pancakes with Crème Fraîche and Chives

For the cakes:

the juice of one lemon
1 onion, peeled and cut into chunks
3 medium-sized, floury potatoes
3 large parsnips
2 cloves of fresh garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tsp (10 ml) ground cumin
salt and freshly milled black pepper
vegetable oil and butter, for frying

For the topping:
crème fraîche
snipped fresh chives

Cut the lemon in half and squeeze its juice into a deep mixing bowl. Put the onion chunks into the goblet of a food processor and blitz until finely chopped, but not a mushy paste. Leave them in the food processor bowl.

Now fit a coarse grating blade to your food processor. Peel the potatoes, cut them into chunks, and feed them quickly through the grater. Peel the parsnips and do the same. Tip the blitzed onions, and the grated potatoes and parsnips into the bowl containing the lemon juice and, using your hands, toss well (this will prevent the gratings from browning). Leave to stand for 15 minutes, and then tip the contents of the bowl into a sieve or colander. Place the sieve over the sink, and, using your hands, press down on the gratings to squeeze out any remaining liquid.

Put the gratings back in the bowl and stir in the crushed garlic and cumin. Season with salt and pepper.

Place a few sheets of absorbent kitchen paper on your counter, next to the stove. Heat equal quantities of vegetable oil and butter in a large, flat frying pan (to a depth of about 2 mm). When the butter has stopped sizzling, take a handful of the grated mixture, squeeze it well to remove any more liquid, and place a mound of it in the hot fat.

Using a spatula, press down hard on the mixture to compress it into a flat pancake. Allow it to brown, pressing down on it once or twice, but not stirring or poking, for three minutes, or until the edges are golden and crispy and the cake is holding together. If the frizzly edges are turning to a dark, dangerous brown, turn down the heat. Flip the pancake over, and fry for another three minutes, or until golden brown and crisp.

Drain on kitchen paper.

To serve, top each pancake with a teaspoon of crème fraîche, and a shower of snipped chives.

Makes about 12 small cakes.

Print Friendly