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A Good GCSE

Steak au Poivre

Albert Roux once maintained that if he wanted to assess

the ability of a young chef he would ask them to fry an

egg. The care with which they would break the shell, the

patience and low temperature they needed to cook the

white so that it did not toughen, the manner in which

they would gently baste the yolk and thus end up with a

perfectly cooked example would tell him all he needed to

know. If a fried egg was the eleven-plus of cookery I think

a peppered steak might be a good GCSE or even ‘A’ level.

There are a number of trucs – a French expression, best

translated as something between a trick and a technique

– involved in the operation. Firstly, assuming you have

bought well and have two beautiful chunks of fillet, the

meat should be brought to room temperature well in

advance of cooking. If the centre of the meat is at ambient

temperature, this will drastically shorten the cooking time

and the rest period. Secondly, the peppercorns must be

broken but no more: a crafty cook will then sieve the

ground corns and use what is left, retaining the finely

ground pepper for some other use. If finely ground pepper

is used on the steak it will burn and make it bitter.

The cook must colour the meat well on all sides, in a

mixture of oil and butter, and salt the meat before cooking

(frowned upon by some, but essential for flavour in my

book), and cook it until the centre of the steak it reaches

just over blood heat, then let it rest in a warm place while

they make the sauce. If the cooking of the meat will test

technical ability, the sauce will test the sense of taste. It

must be unctuous without being cloying and will need

just a hint of acidity and bite to do the steak justice.

I am assuming that you will want your steak rare. It is,

dare I say it, comme il faut, although I am always happy

to be guided by the customer in this regard. If he or she

wants their steak well done, that is their prerogative. I have

to say I was much heartened when we cooked beef

Wellington for a seventieth birthday party of a hundred

and two people. The beef was cooked to a beautiful rosy

rare and we sent it out, anticipating a few requests for

some to be more cooked. It is a measure of how far we have

come gastronomically – or perhaps how orthodoxy has

taken hold – that we received no such request and every

plate came back clean.

33

January