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Entrecotes, Montpellier
Neatly trim and flatten two one-and-a-quarter-pound tender sirloin steaks. Mix on plate a tablespoon oil, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, repeatedly roll steaks in it and set to broil on a brisk fire for eight minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, spread Montpellier butter over, decorate with a little watercress and serve.
A plain broiled steak whose whole character comes from the compound butter melting over it. Two points need attention: the butter is assumed rather than given, and the cooking time belongs to an era of cooler, less predictable broiling fires.
- The Montpellier butter is the recipeThe book expects you to know it: softened butter pounded with blanched and squeezed green herbs (parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives, watercress, a little spinach for colour), shallot, capers, cornichons, anchovy, garlic and sieved hard-boiled egg yolk. Classic versions also beat in a raw yolk and oil; make it a day ahead so the flavours settle, and keep it cold until the moment of serving.
- Eight minutes a side is too longOn a modern broiler or a hot grill, a steak of this size finished at eight minutes per side will be well past medium. Cook to internal temperature instead: 125-130F for rare to medium rare, pulling it a few degrees short and resting five to ten minutes before the butter goes on.
- "A brisk fire"Full heat. Broiler element preheated ten minutes with the rack close, or a charcoal fire you can hold a hand over for only two or three seconds. The butter is rich, so the meat wants real char to stand up to it.
- Entrecote versus sirloinAn entrecote is properly the cut between the ribs, what a butcher now sells as ribeye or rib steak. The text says sirloin, and either works; strip loin is the closest common substitute if you want the firmer texture the name implies.
- Thickness matters more than weightA one-and-a-quarter-pound steak could be an inch thick or two. Ask for 1¼ to 1½ inches; anything thinner will be grey through before the outside colours, and the flattening the recipe calls for should be gentle, only to even out the thickness.
- The oil and saltA tablespoon of oil with a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for two large steaks is a light dressing, not a marinade. Roll them in it just before cooking, or salt them uncovered in the refrigerator for several hours and oil them at the last minute for a drier surface and better browning.
- YieldTwo steaks of this size serve four generously once sliced across the grain. Allow roughly 1 to 1½ oz of the compound butter per steak.
Beurre de Montpellier is one of the old French green butters, often associated with the Languedoc city whose name it carries, though that link is traditional rather than documented. Versions built on blanched herbs, anchovy, capers and egg yolk were set down in the French professional repertoire, Escoffier's among them. It was made as much for looks as for taste: the blanching fixes a vivid green that was used to coat cold poached salmon and to mask galantines on the buffet, and it is also served melting over hot beef.