We're gonna make a classic steak frites.
For a steak frites, you start with an affordable,
beautiful piece of meat called hanger steak.
This is delicious as is, liberally salted
and peppered, like kosher salt makes a delicious crust,
coarse black pepper, screaming hot pan,
that's really all you need to do.
If you wanna put it in a quick marinade,
my family loves, this is so simple,
take the hanger steaks, throw a couple of cloves
of crushed garlic into the dish,
I usually put a fat clove on top of each steak,
a few sprigs of thyme that will stay in the pan
the entire time that the steaks are cooking,
a little Worcestershire, coarse black pepper,
fat amount of salt, over the shoulder for luck,
and a drizzle of olive oil.
So we're going to get these guys going,
but I have to talk you through the other courses here.
We're going to make a quick
creamed spinach to go wit this.
I've already started the pan with
a couple of tabs of butter, couple tablespoons of butter,
melted that down, I put in a large shallot, finely chopped,
and some finely chopped or grated garlic.
You let the garlic and the shallots sweat out a bit,
that's what's happened here, and then
we're going to sprinkle in to make our roux,
or our thickening agent, we're gonna sprinkle in
a little flour and then we're
going to hit the pan with a little sherry.
And we're going to add in about two thirds
of a cup of half & half or heavy cream.
So you let this come up to a bubble,
and you start wilting in the spinach.
Fries are really done in two stages.
The way you get that super crispy, delicious
bistro-quality frites is you cut
thin sticks, quarter inch sticks, for your fries.
Fry them once at 325, take them out,
and cool them completely, turn your fat up to 375,
and re-fry your frites right after this.
Pull your crushed garlic off to the side,
pull your thyme off to the side,
flip your steaks, do not mess with meat
when you put it in the pan, you must let it
do its thing and get to that deep reddish brown color.
Now we need to season this, I'm going to add
a little white pepper and black pepper,
they hit different parts of your tongue.
Any time I use cream or dark green anything,
I use nutmeg because it highlights
the flavor of either and both.
So we add a little of that, and just before I serve,
I add the juice of half a lemon.
You have to have acidity in there
to cut through the fat in the cream.
And we're going to drop our cooled,
already fried once fries in our 375 oil.
For the dip for that, we're going to make a quick aioli.
So to this I'm gonna add a little granulated garlic,
some ketchup, we're making a balsamic ketchup aioli.
Mmmm.
And your balsamic, you want a good aged balsamic,
it should be thick and syrupy,
you could also make your own balsamic drizzle
by reducing a little bit of brown sugar
until it's this consistency.
So we've got our dipping sauce ready.
Our steaks are flipped, we've got our fries cooking.
Come on back and we'll serve our bistro supper.
My last basket of frites is out,
I salted them generously with fine sea salt,
I'm adding lemon juice to my perfect creamed spinach,
lovely, turn that off.
We're going to finish our steaks by butter basting them.
Melt a little butter down into our pan,
steaks have got that flavor of Worcestershire,
crushed garlic, and thyme, basting those beautiful babies.
(laughing)
Yeah, baby.
These guys will rest up a bit,
and we'll take some of our creamed spinach
with the sherry alongside.
I know.
And then, our screamin' hot frites.
(crowd applauding)
Lovely.
And our balsamic ketchup aioli dipper to go alongside.
Look at those babies.
And steak knives, order up.