An Easy, Delicious Green Peppercorn Sauce Recipe for Steaks

There's a dish that my whole family loves, but which we've only ordered when we're out at restaurants. Just in the last month or so we've enjoyed it at two of our favorite local places, Grace & Rose and Les Petites Canailles. And I feel like I can still taste the lovely rendition that Chef Laurent Grangien makes at BL Brasserie, even though it's been a few months since I last enjoyed it. The dish I'm talking about is steak with green peppercorn sauce. So I decided this would be the weekend that we tried it out. I got some thick-cut New York strips at Primal House, some green peppercorns in brine from Etto, and started digging around my favorite cookbooks and websites for a recipe.

The challenge was that there wasn't a cookbook in our collection I trusted with a recipe that seemed right, and while different websites had recipes that looked good, there wasn't one that had all the flavorings (brandy, shallots, beef fond, beef stock) that I felt like the recipe should incorporate. So I used them as guidelines and built my own. The result was delicious, and I thought I'd share. The recipe makes enough sauce for generous accompaniment to two pounds of steaks.

Ingredients:

• The fond (the browned, caramelized bits left in a pan after searing steaks) from cooking your steaks
• 1/3 cup shallots, chopped
• 1/2 cup brandy
• 1/2 cup beef stock
• 1/4 cup green peppercorns in brine, drained and patted dry
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

Directions:

• Cook steaks in a pan. Remove when they get to your desired doneness, leaving the fond and any fat in the pan.
• Add shallots to pan over low heat and stir, loosening the fond as you stir, until the shallots are soft but not browned, about 2 minutes.
• Increase the heat to medium and add the brandy. Simmer, stirring, 1-2 minutes until the volume has reduced by half and the alcohol smell is gone.
• Add the beef stock and the peppercorns and simmer 2-3 minutes until reduced by half, stirring regularly.
• Reduce heat to low and add the cream. Bring to a simmer and stir 1-2 minutes until it thickens slightly. You don't want this to get to a full boil.
• Spoon over the steaks, and serve.

Notes:

• If you grill your steaks rather than cooking them in the pan, one of the online recipes I saw suggested you can get much of the richness by cooking the shallots in a couple of tablespoons of butter.
• If you want a little more tang, which I thought might be nice, you could add a quarter cup of red wine when you add the beef stock. I think I'll try this next time. I would be sure to cook it down a little more in this case, as I wouldn't want to thin out the sauce's lovely richness.

Wine Pairing:

We opened a glorious mature Burgundy from the cellar that my dad accumulated, and the wine and the sauce were tremendous together. But it would be excellent with any mature Tablas Creek. I would lean toward something with both structure and solid acidity (so something based on Mourvedre, or a powerful Pinot Noir like the one we tried) but this seemed to me like a pairing that would be outstanding for any serious, structured red wine.

If you try it, please let me know what you thought!