Unpinned - Aged T-Bone Roast with Green Peppercorn Sauce and Yorkshire Puddings
Wow, that’s a heck of a long title for a blog post. Welcome back, dear reader! As you can see, we’re sticking to our FANCY food trend right now and cooking up some OLD MEAT! ‘What the heck is old meat?’ you may ask. According to Wikipedia, dry aging is a process where meat is hung or placed on a rack to dry for several weeks. It results in meat that is more flavorful and tender due to science and magic. And at first I scoffed and thought that I’d prefer my food NOT left in a cupboard for a few weeks, thank you very much. But now that I’ve tried 45+ day aged T-bone? Ruined. I’m ruined for boring normal meat for life.
And so I present to you: Aged T-Bone Roast with Green Peppercorn Sauce and Yorkshire Puddings
Verdict: Is the Pintrest photo complete bullshit? - Not really! That’s pretty much what it looks like, although we don’t use polished wooden platters to eat off of.
Is it crazy expensive/time consuming/confusing? - Yes. Because we’re on a fancy kick. That shit is like $50 A POUND.
Does it taste good? - YES. It tastes like it’s WORTH $50 a pound.
Aged T-Bone Roast with Green Peppercorn Sauce and Yorkshire Puddings
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the Yorkshire puddings
For the green peppercorn sauce
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 T brandy (or 1 t brandy extract, which is alcohol free)
2 T slightly crushed green peppercorns
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Make the batter for the Yorkshire puddings 1 hour in advance.
Beat the eggs with the milk, add the flour and salt, and mix until smooth. Transfer to a jug and set aside.
Heat a frying pan, rub the meat with the olive oil and season. Brown the steak on both sides.
Remove from the pan, reserving the juices in the pan. Place the steak on a roasting tray and roast for 20 minutes, or until done to your liking.
To make the green peppercorn sauce, place the beef stock into a clean saucepan and simmer until reduced by half, about 10 minutes.
In the pan containing the meat juices, heat the olive oil and fry the chopped shallots until soft. Add the reduced stock, cream, brandy and peppercorns. Simmer until thick, about 15 minutes.
Remove the steak from the oven, cover with foil and allow to rest in a warm place for 15 minutes.
Increase the oven’s temperature to 220°C.
Place 2 t oil into each mould of a muffin tray. Place into the oven to heat up. Once the oil is hot, pour in enough batter to half fill each mould and return to the oven immediately. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden and risen.
Serve immediately with the T-bone and green peppercorn sauce.
Here it is, all its dry-aged beauty. The first thing you may have noticed about this recipe is that the cooking temperatures and certain word spellings seem a little...foreign? Backwards? UNAMERICAN? Only my dear cooking partner James would be crazy enough to find us a UK recipe that required constant googling of ‘180 degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit’ (also god bless spell check because units of temperature measurement are hella hard to spell).
The next thing you may notice is that the recipe calls for brandy, which I have quite a lot of sitting on my bar. This did us absolutely no good when I failed to pack it and bring it with me to the Kent household. So rather than trek back out into the cold, we improvised and used ‘White Christmas’ rum and brandy spirit mix. It’s a cheap and delicious way to booze up your hot cocoa and I highly recommend everyone grab a bottle the next time they spot one - excellent bang for your buck, and surprisingly delicious in a cream shallot sauce!
Thankfully a few years now of writing this blog has taught me a couple of things (remember the pie fiasco that required a whole bunch of dough refrigeration at 11pm?). I now actually READ the recipe before we begin, and so we knew to make the Yorkshire pudding mix first, so that it could chill while we worked on the steak. I would’ve left it for the 24 minutes it took us to finish the steak. James insisted we wait the full hour. Damn it.
MMM. Searing stage. Not nearly as quick as the skirt steak from our last attempt, but still surprisingly fast. I had fewer concerns about poisoning ourselves since this beauty just sears for flavor but bakes in the oven for actual, y’know, cooking.
My mouth is watering while writing this blog post. Can’t you just SMELL this picture?! It was amazing.
Then it was time to chop the shallots, wherein (as is custom) my eyes turned into pits of fiery red splintered glass shards. And there was much rejoicing. Rews and raw onions just don’t mix.
Here’s our reduced beef broth, getting the ol’ shallot and cream treatment. I don’t know what brilliant human realized that cream + broth = magic, but I love them for it.
Getting saucy! I probably spent 15+ minutes staring at the wall of spices in my local grocery store trying to find green peppercorns. Were they squishy? Dry? Did I need to pick them out of the tri-color peppercorn grinders? Were they strange British slang for something else, like capers? I did eventually find them, and behold - our green peppercorn sauce was born.
The steak while it was ‘resting’. Yup, that’s actually a thing we did. I figure if you’re gonna drop $50+ dollars a pound on some meat, you may as well do everything you can do to make it taste perfect.
Yorkshire pudding time! I can’t be the only one who had no clue that Yorkshire pudding does not actually refer to pudding. It’s a popover. Yes, I know - I was as shocked as you are. We heated the oil in the tin then poured our batter mix in. There was some serious bubbling and splatter, but we survived.
Little poufy pudding puffs, ready to bake!
James modeling his Yorkshire puddings. Aren’t they cute and slightly grotesque looking? Like bread mushrooms. Or golden squishy rocks. They were delicious.
(I suppose they just look like popovers, really)
The table set for four, with some tasty peas on the side and epic red wine courtesy of Dave’s Fresh Pasta, where our hosts are part of their wine of the month club. The fancy meat is thanks to the brilliant folks over at M.F. Dulock, who offer an amazing meat share program.
My plate in its final form. I LOVE the bones.
Final final verdict: This was a fairly time-consuming recipe that wasn’t too difficult - things just needed time to rest and chill. Worthwhile, as it was INCREDIBLY delicious. If you’re ever looking to cook for a super special occasion or find a crazy deal on dry aged beef, go for it. Just be forewarned that it will ruin your appreciation for regular meat forever.
