Peppercorn Steak with a Honey-Dijon Cream Sauce

This is my variant on a popular French steak dish called steak au-poivre, which is a peppercorn encrusted steak often pan-cooked with butter. The sauce is a simple cream and butter sauce with some other stuff mixed in to thicken it and make it delicious.

Hands-on Time: 15-25 minutes.
Hands-off Time: none
Serves: two

Gear:
12-inch frying pan
oven/toaster

Ingredients:
1-2 12oz steaks (precooked weight)
6 tbsp butter (3/4 a stick)
-- cream
1 tsp honey
1-2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/4 cup pepper

1. Either roughly grind or (if you have a mortar and pestle) crush the pepper. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, you can grind the stuff between two strong, well fitting bowls, or put the peppercorns on a plate and crush them with the bottom of a bowl.

2. Toss two tablespoons of butter into a pan on medium heat.

3. While the butter is melting in the pan, press the desired amount of pepper into each side of the steak.

4. Put the steaks into the pan with the melted butter and turn to medium-low heat. Cook to desired rareness, but check step 5 so that you’re in sync Depending on the cut of the meat, 5 minutes on each side for rare, 7 minutes for medium, and 10 minutes for well done.

5. When you flip the steak over, toss a tablespoon of butter into a small frying pan on medium heat.

6. When it melts and begins to brown, add 1/4 cup of cream, and mix that up well.

7. Add a tablespoon or two of Dijon mustard (depending how much you like Dijon mustard), and the teaspoon of honey and turn to low heat.

8. When the steak is ready, put it on a plate and pour off the fat from the pan, but save the drippings.

9. Stir the drippings from the cooked steak into the sauce pan.

10. Pour the sauce over the steaks.

I wish that I had learned this recipe earlier because it’s so easy to make and involves so few ingredients and dishes for clean-up. Everybody whose eaten my version of this traditional dish loves it.