Tournedos au château
Serves 4, 40 minutes cooking time
These tender steaks are made extra special by serving them on a bed of mushroom purée, then topping with green pepper butter. A good burgundy would be ideal with this.
Ingredients:
4 tournedos steaks, each about
three-quarters of an inch/2cm thick
1 tbsp. green peppercorns, chopped
100g/4oz butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
50g/2oz dark mushrooms, finely chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp. thick cream
4 slices of bread, cut into rounds
2 tbsps. vegetable oil
Method:
Mix the peppercorns into 50g/2oz butter to distribute evenly. Shape the butter into a sausage roll between a piece of greaseproof paper and freeze until needed. Heat 25g/1oz of butter in a saucepan over a low heat and cook the chopped onion until soft and pale in colour. Add the mushrooms to the mixture, stir well and season with salt and pepper. Pour on the cream, stir to make a thick pureé and keep warm.
Melt the rest of the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat and fry the bread rounds until golden and crisp on both sides, to make canapés. Heat the vegetable oil in the frying pan over a medium heat and, when hot, fry the steaks for about three minutes on each side for rare and four minutes per side for medium cooked. Put the canapés on a heated serving dish, cover each with a quarter of mushroom purée, then place the steaks on top. Place a generous amount of peppercorn butter on top of each steak and serve with vegetables.
Wines
A good quality full red wine would go very well with this lovely rich steak dish. DFJ’s top label, the Grand’ Arte range have an excellent Trincadeira from the Ribatejo, which won a Gold Medal at this year’s London International Wine Challenge. This is full of rich fruit flavours but with real class as well, and would go down very well with this dish. From the Douro, you could try Vertice Tinto, a classy wine from this important wine region, full of ripe fruit but with well-balanced tannins and interesting complexity. Both of these cost around 10 euros, but are worth it for this dish.
These wines, and many others, are available from WineMine. Why not join the WineMine Club and enjoy the opportunity of tasting before you buy and get all the help and advice you might want for choosing your wines? Call 282 441 036 to find out more.
