We picked up a copy of The New Steak: Recipes for a Range of Cuts plus Savory Sides by Cree LeFavour recently, and have been very pleased with the recipes we’ve tried out.
At first, we weren’t sure about a cookbook just about steak. But as it turns out, there are lots of delicious and very different ways to “do steak”. The steak recipes are arranged in the following categories: American steak, Bistro steak, Latin steak and Far East steak. Each recipe also comes with a suggested side, and we’ve discovered the sides to be just as delicious and different as the recipes.
Another wonderful thing about The New Steak is that the recipes use a wide range of cuts, and not just the more expensive tenderloin and striploin cuts. There are, for example, several skirt steak recipes; we’re in Canada, so it took us a while to find the equivalent (turns out to be flank steak, as we don’t seem to differentiate flank from skirt from hangar). The skirt steak recipes we’ve tried have all been quite good, and we’re impressed at the range of things we can do with a piece of flank steak.
An Absolutely Fabulous Homemade Burger
One thing we like to do when we buy a new cookbook is let each of the two older kids look through it and select something they like. You’d think in a book filled with steak recipes, we’d end up with, well, a steak recipe of some sort picked out by each of them. But our son zeroed in on the only burger recipe in the book: The Julia Burger with Crispy Onion Rings and Purple Slaw.
I’m not a huge fan of burgers, homemade or otherwise, but the way we play the “each child picks a recipe” game is that we try out whatever recipe they want, as long as we can get the ingredients. Ward was about as thrilled with the idea of frying up burgers as I was at the thought of eating one! But we gamely went ahead with the plan.
What we ended up with was the most amazing burger I’ve ever tasted. The Julia Burger doesn’t use ground beef; instead, you start with 1 1/2 pounds of steak - it can be hangar, top blade, skirt, sirloin, “whatever you like and can afford”). You trim off the fat and cut it into 2-inch chunks which you then pulse just a few times in the food processor. The result when formed into patties and barbecued is just absolutely delicious. The burgers came off the grill smaller than normal but thick, and we discovered the best way to eat them was to crumple them up on the bun; the crispy onion rings were a hit, as expected, but so was the purple slaw, which called for a dressing made with mayonaise, apple cider vinegar and an egg yolk.
The Steak Recipes
So far, we’ve tried a range of recipes and each one has worked out well, with wonderful flavor combinations that are different enough that even the one week we made three of the recipes from the book we didn’t feel like we were “eating steak all the time”.
Recipes we’ve tried so far include: Warwick-Style Coffee-Rubbed Filet with Vanilla Sauce, Shallot and Sherry Vinegar-Marinated Flank Steak with Sautéed Wild Mushrooms, Bolognese Sauce over Homemade Noodles with Garlic Bread, Crispy Beef Satay and Wasabi-Stuffed Filet.
In each case, Ward also prepared the recommended side dishes, each of which complemented the main dish quite well. The Wasabi-Stuffed Filet, for example, is rounded out with a dish of Daikon-Watercress Relish, while the Warwick-Style Coffee-Rubbed Filet paired well with Hazelnut Green Beans.
Muse in the Kitchen Recommendation:
This is definitely a great addition to any cooking library; The New Steak is a good specialty cookbook and one we find ourselves reaching for whenever we’re contemplating having steak for dinner. Definitely recommended if you like beef, or are interested in trying a variety of steak recipes.
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