Planked Steak
1 steak 2 inches thick Duchess potatoes Various kinds of cooked vegetables Butter Chopped parsley Salt Paprika Trim the fat and make outline of the steak even. Sear it on both sides on a hot griddle or pan, using no fat. Cook fifteen minutes, turning frequently. Oil a heated plank, place the steak on the plank, and arrange border of Duchess potatoes around it. Arrange other cooked vegetables, such as stuffed tomatoes or green peppers, small boiled onions, peas, string beans and cubes of carrot or turnip, around the steak, also, so that the board is entirely concealed. Place the plank in the oven until the potato border is browned and all the vegetables are heated through. After removing it from the oven, spread the steak with butter into which has been rubbed finely chopped parsley, salt and paprika. Send to table upon the plank.
A restaurant presentation dish from the era when an oak plank was standard equipment. The steak is essentially finished before it ever reaches the oven, so the plank stage is about browning the potato border, not cooking the meat.
- The plankA hardwood serving plank (oak, ash or hickory), roughly 1 inch thick, must be seasoned with oil and heated gradually before use, or it will crack and char. A heavy oval oven-safe platter does the same job if you have no plank.
- Oven heatUse a hot oven, 425-450F, and keep the time short -- five to eight minutes is enough to brown a piped potato border. Longer and the steak will overcook while you wait for colour.
- Duchess potatoesMashed potato enriched with egg yolk and butter, stiff enough to pipe through a star tube. Make them ahead; they must be firm and cool enough to hold a shape or the border will slump on the hot plank.
- DonenessFifteen minutes on a griddle plus oven time will likely take a 2-inch steak to medium or beyond by modern taste. Sear hard, then pull it at 120-125F internal for rare, allowing for the further rise during the oven stage.
- Dry searing"Using no fat" works only on a properly preheated cast iron or steel surface. Dry the steak's surface thoroughly first, and expect heavy smoke.
- Maitre d'hotel butterThe butter rubbed with parsley, salt and paprika is essentially a maitre d'hotel butter, though the classic French version includes lemon juice and pepper rather than paprika. It can be made in advance and chilled, then sliced onto the hot steak instead of spread in the kitchen.
- VegetablesAll of them must be fully cooked before they go on the plank; the oven only reheats. Choose two or three rather than the whole list, or the plank turns into a crowded reheat tray.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A 2-inch steak, depending on cut, will run roughly 2 to 3 lb or more, which with the vegetable garnish would serve about four to six.
Planked meat and fish belong to a distinctly American line of cookery, generally traced to the practice of fixing shad or other fish to a board propped before an open fire, and taken up by late nineteenth-century hotel and chophouse kitchens as a showpiece: the plank came to the table sizzling, ringed with piped potato, and needed no serving dish. Seasoned planks were sold as kitchen goods in the early twentieth century. The dish is really an exercise in arrangement -- note the instruction that the board be "entirely concealed" -- which explains why the recipe lists garnishes in more detail than it gives about the meat.