Eye fillet steak

Compound butter

Posted by Gary

Hello reader,

I thought I’d try making compound butter with my steak tonight. I’ve never made compound butter before, so I started with something simple. A butter made with spring onions and chives. Spring onions are called scallions and green onions in other parts of the world.

As a child, we called them shallots.

I am cooking the eye fillet steak underwater at 55 °C for 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad. Focus on six pomegranate arils for Persephone.
Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad. Six pomegranate arils for Persephone.

Recipe

Equipment

  • Water heater circulator
  • Water bath
  • Butane torch
  • Mandolin
  • Food processor
  • Mortar and Pestle[i]

Ingredients

  • Eye fillet steak
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Butter
  • Spring onions
  • Chives
  • Whisky[ii]
  • Fennel
  • Red onion
  • Radish
  • Parsley
  • Lemon juice
  • Olive oil

Instructions

Steak

  1. Season the steak with some salt and pepper.
  2. Place the steak into a plastic bag and vacuum seal the bag.
  3. Cook the steak in a water bath for 2 hours at 55 °C.
  4. Remove the bag and open it.
  5. Remove the steak and pat it dry.
  6. Heat a cast-iron pan and sear the steak.
  7. Place a disc of the compound butter on top of the steak. Apply the flame from a butane torch to melt the butter and sear the surface of the steak.
  8. Remove the steak from the cast-iron pan and allow it to rest.
  9. Keep the melted butter in the pan for later.

Butter

  1. Bring the butter to room temperature.
  2. Finely slice the chives and spring onions.
  3. Place the chives and spring onions in a jar and add about 10 mL of whisky.
  4. Infuse the whisky into the herbs using a vacuum chamber and refrigerate the jar for a few hours.
  5. Remove the herbs and put them onto absorbent paper to remove as much moisture as possible.
  6. Put some whole peppercorns and rock salt into a mortar and pound with a pestle until the salt and pepper are coarse grinds.
  7. Process the butter, chives, and springs with the salt and pepper.
  8. Mould the butter in some plastic wrap and refrigerate the butter.
  9. When it’s time to use the butter, cut a disc about 1 cm thick and use it for the steak.

Salad

  1. With a mandolin, slice some fennel, red onion, and radish.
  2. Chop some parsley.
  3. With the back of a cook’s knife, beat the arils out of a pomegranate.
  4. Be careful when you beat the arils out; the juice will spray and splatter, and it may stain your clothes and any bench tops.
  5. Mix a little lime juice and olive oil for a salad dressing.
  6. Toss the salad and season it with some salt to taste.
Pomegranate
Pomegranate SONY ILCE-7S with E 35mm F1.8 OSS at 35mm and f/8, 1/40sec, ISO 1600
Pomegranate arils for lunch
Pomegranate arils for lunch

Plating up

  1. Slice the eye fillet steak with a sharp knife and lay the slices onto a warmed dinner plate.
  2. Spoon some salad next to the meat.
  3. Spoon the butter from the pan over the meat and drizzle a little over the salad.
  4. Give thanks to the Lord.
  5. Eat with a fork; the meat will be tender enough to make a knife redundant.

Concluding thoughts

Today was the first spring day warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt. It was a lovely day outside.

This steak with salad was a fantastic meal for a warm night.

[i] If you can’t remember the pestle and the mortar, remember you Pound with the Pestle.

[ii] I used Johnnie Walker Black Label.

Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad
Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad
Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad. Focus on the salad.
Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad
Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad. Focus on the cut surface of the steak.
Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad
Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad. Focus on the cut surface of the steak.
Sous vide eye fillet steak with compound butter and fennel salad

Sous vide pepper steak and scallops with hollandaise sauce

Posted by Gary

So, it’s another week and another non-recipe post. This post is more like a status update of what I cooked on Saturday night.

Sous vide pepper eye fillet steak with scallops and roe with broccolini and hollandaise sauce

My weight loss motivation has got a bit stagnant, so trying new things has also suffered a little.

I wanted a moderate dinner, but still something special for a Saturday night. I went with eye fillet steak again because it cooks without a lot of fuss, and if you treat it well, it will be tender and moist.

I wanted something with a little kick too so I tied up the meat and pressed in some freshly ground black whole peppercorns, iodised salt, and garlic powder. As always, I pulverise my spices and salt together in a heavy mortar with a nicely weighted pestle. 

Salt and Pepper Eye fillet steak

Because the temperature of the water bath would never exceed 55 °C, there was no chance of the pepper burning, so I was happy to coat the steak in pepper before cooking.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever burnt pepper, but it has an unpleasant, acrid odour and you never want to sear a pepper-coated steak for too long.

Salt and Pepper Eye fillet steak

While I was shopping, I saw there was scallop meat in the delicatessen display. The scallop meat with roe and the alimentary tract was $29 per kilogram while the scallop meat sans roe and the alimentary tract was $34 per kilogram. The roe adds a lovely coral colour to the dish, so I went with the cheaper option. For those readers who don’t know me, I never remove the alimentary canal from an invertebrate, and I wasn’t going to start. Life’s too short for that palaver.

I’ve described how to make hollandaise sauce elsewhere. It’s hard to go past a hollandaise sauce with steak and scallops. Rather than pour or spoon the sauce over the steak and scallops, I decided to serve it in a small bowl and use it as a dipping sauce. The dipping sauce approach was fantastic. As I loaded my fork with a little sweet broccolini, scallop, and steak, I dipped that meaty lollipop into the hollandaise sauce and got a good coating over everything the tines of my fork had penetrated.

Vacuum packed Salt and Pepper Eye fillet steak

The scallops were just seared in the skillet as I was caramelising the surface of the steak after it had finished cooking in the water bath (55 °C for 2 hours). The heat barely licked the scallops.

The broccolini was dead easy. After washing the broccolini in a large mixing bowl, I let the broccolini drain and then doused the green vegetables with some olive oil. I then added a squirt of golden syrup and ground over some iodised salt. With my hands, I massaged the sweet, salty, oiliness into the heads of the broccolini being gentle with the broccolini heads so as not to be too rough with the delicate end.

Precision cooker and water bath

I then arranged the broccolini on a lined baking sheet and put them into a hot oven for 15 minutes. 

Plating up was dead easy, after allowing the steak to rest I cut off the bindings and then with a sharp knife (I used a cooking knife my middle daughter gave me as a father’s day gift last year) I sliced into the soft tender moist flesh to reveal blushing joy. There’s nothing like a nicely cooked piece of muscle meat, red, moist but not running with its juices.

Sous vide pepper steak

Sous vide pepper eye fillet steak with scallops and roe with broccolini and hollandaise sauce

I put the steak onto a dinner plate which I had warmed on top of the water bath and then arranged the scallops. I poured the freshly made hollandaise sauce into a small bowl and put it onto the plate. The last thing to be added was the oven-cooked broccolini. The heads looked limp rather than the tumescence they once had, but I knew those flowery heads would taste sweet and salty, and when coated with the creaminess of the hollandaise, the taste would be unique and so delicious. 

Sous vide pepper eye fillet steak with scallops and roe with broccolini and hollandaise sauce
Sous vide pepper eye fillet steak with scallops and roe with broccolini and hollandaise sauce

New profile pic

Me in my Spam Hawaii shirt holding a tin of Bacon Spam
Me in my Spam Hawaii shirt holding a tin of Bacon Spam with Acacia pycnantha (Wattle) in the background.

Garlic butter steak and chips

Posted by Gary

Garlic butter sous vide steak, scallops and hot chips

Last week I made steak pizzaiola and used eye fillet steak which I cooked sous vide. I was impressed with how tender the meat was. I went and bought some more. Because butter makes everything better, I thought I’d add a pat of butter when I served it. To extend the butter theme a little more, I’d seen someone added melted garlic butter to hot chips and I thought I’d give that a try too.

Dedicated to all the dairy farmers who bring joy to our lives through cream and butter.

Tonight I used Lurpak butter
Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops
Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops

I wondered what could enhance garlic butter steak and chips? Why not a little surf and turf, or should that be reef and beef? I bought some scallops and you know that scallops and butter are a match made in heaven. Well, at least I hope heaven has butter, bacon, steak, pasta, noodles, and pizza.

The garlic butter chips are not low carb I know. They do taste good though and I don’t care that I bought frozen chips and cooked them in the oven. After all, I am all about convenience eating.

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Recipe

It’s important to read the recipe before cooking because the timing of processes needs to be understood.

Garlic butter steak and chips

Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops on a cold night in Canberra. It’s been snowing. I hate the snow.

Steak and scallops

  • Eye fillet steak
  • Iodised rock salt
  • Black whole peppercorns
  • Garlic powder
  • Butter
  • Garlic
  • Dried oregano
  • Scallops
  • Hot chips

McCain frozen chips

  • Butter
  • Garlic

Garlic butter

  1. Get the butter to room temperature.
  2. With a fork mix in the crushed garlic and dried oregano.
  3. Form a disc in the bottom of a bowl and refrigerate until it’s time to plate up.

Sous vide steak

  1. Remove the steak from the packaging.
  2. Trim the fillet and bind the muscle fibres with some cooking twine.

  3. Grind some rock salt and whole peppercorns in a mortar with a pestle. Once the salt and pepper have been coarsely ground add in some garlic powder and mix.
  4. Season the steak with the salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

  5. Seal the steak in a vacuum bag.
  6. Cook in a water bath at 57 °C for 2 hours.
  7. Remove the bagged steak from the water bath and then remove the steak from the bag.
  8. Dry the surface of the steak with absorbent paper.
  9. Sear the steak in a cast-iron skillet.

Scallops

  1. Dry the surface of the scallops and sear in a hot skillet.

McCain SuperFries

  1. Cook according to the instructions on the packaging.
  2. Once the chips are cooked put them into a large metal mixing bowl.
  3. Using microwave radiation melt the butter an mix in some crushed garlic.
  4. Pour the melted garlic butter over the hot chips a little bit at a time and toss the chips at the same time.

Plating up bit

  1. Place the steak on a dinner plate along with the scallops and chips.

  2. Get the cold disc of garlic and herb butter and put it on the steak so that it melts as you eat.

Disclaimer I have no culinary training nor qualifications. This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner. The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste. I deliberately do not calculate the energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.

Photographs

This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one image and then scroll through the photographs. I’ve been told the gallery doesn’t always work on older versions of Windows Internet Explorer. I suggest Google Chrome or using a Mac.

  • Eye fillet steak
  • Eye fillet steak
  • Eye fillet steak Salt Pepper Garlic powder
  • Eye fillet steak Salt Pepper Garlic powder
  • Eye fillet steak Salt Pepper Garlic powder
  • Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops
  • Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops
    Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops
  • Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops
  • Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops
    Garlic butter steak and chips with scallops

Questions and answers

What’s with eye fillet steak two weekends in a row?

Normally I like to cook scotch fillet steak because it has the eye fillet and the cap or deckle meat. The deckle meat is the best because it has seams of fat running through it and when cut against the grain it is so tender, tasty, and juicy.

The eye fillet is more lean but it is supremely tender. With the butter the natural beef flavour is augmented.

Why not cook the scallops sous vide too?

I’d like to cook scallops by sous vide but I only have one precision cooker and the timing would be out of whack. That said, I could have cooked the steak first and then refrigerated it and after the scallops were cooked I could have reheated the steak quickly in the water bath as the scallops were finishing. Maybe next time.

Would garlic butter steak and chips have made for a nice fancy pub meal?

Yep, I mean steak and chips is classic pub fare. I expect though in a pub, gravy would replace the butter. Maybe I should have served some tomato sauce too.

Final thoughts

  • Do you like garlic butter steak and chips?
  • Are you a fan of scallops and butter?
  • How do you like your hot chips?

Steak pizzaiola

Posted by Gary

This is the first time I’ve cooked steak pizzaiola. Before this week, I had no idea what steak pizzaiola is. I first heard about it when watching Guga on Sous Vide Everything.

Dedicated to Guga from Sous Vide Everything and my dear friend GC

Two sources of impeccable information

Pronouncing steak pizzaiola

I asked GC how is pizzaiola pronounced. “It’s basically pizza-yoh-lah or pizza-your-la if you want more of an Aussie twang to it 😉

“It means steak ‘pizza-style’ pretty much. So a pizzaiolo is someone who is trained in the art of proper pizza making and I presume it’s used as an adjective here to describe the steak due to its thin flat nature and that the sauce is akin to a pizza.”

Steak Pizzaiola with sous vide eye fillet and fresh linguine
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