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Porterhouse Steak, Bordelaise
Procure a porterhouse steak from the short loin, one and a half inches thick, trim off fat a little, season all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, then neatly rub both sides with a tablespoon oil; arrange on a broiler and broil on a charcoal fire twelve minutes on each side. Remove, place on a large hot dish, pour a Bordelaise sauce over, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over all and serve.
A plain grill recipe whose only real problem is the timing: twenty-four minutes over live coals will take a 1½-inch steak well past well done. Everything else is a matter of translating the sauce, which the original assumes you already have on the stove.
- Cut the time in halfFor a 1½-inch porterhouse over hot charcoal, 4-6 minutes per side brings the centre to about 130F for medium rare; 12 minutes a side would produce a thoroughly well-done steak, which may have been what was intended here. Judge by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the strip side, not the clock, and rest the steak 8-10 minutes before saucing.
- Porterhouse from the short loinStill essentially what a butcher means today: the rear end of the short loin, with a substantial section of tenderloin on one side of the bone and strip on the other. A 1½-inch steak of this cut runs 1½-2 lb and would serve two, consistent with the single "large hot dish" the recipe calls for.
- Two muscles, two donenessThe tenderloin side cooks faster than the strip. Set the steak on the grill with the tenderloin toward the cooler edge of the fire so the two sides finish together.
- Bordelaise sauce is assumed, not givenThe recipe simply calls for "a Bordelaise sauce", expecting the cook to know it or to find it elsewhere in the book. Classically: red wine (Bordeaux) reduced with shallot, thyme and a bay leaf, then finished with demi-glace or a strong reduced brown stock, and traditionally garnished with poached beef marrow. A modern stand-in is a shallot and red wine reduction enriched with veal or beef stock and a knob of butter off the heat.
- Charcoal, and what to do without itThe charcoal fire is not decorative; it supplies the dry radiant heat this recipe relies on. Indoors, a heavy cast-iron pan brought to smoking point gives a comparable crust, though 4-5 minutes a side plus a basting of butter is nearer the mark than the original timing.
- Oil and saltA tablespoon of oil rubbed on both sides is there to keep the meat from sticking to the bars and to help browning. If you have time, salt the steak an hour ahead rather than immediately before cooking; the surface dries and browns better.
- ServingSauce over the steak at the table, or the crust softens on the way from the kitchen. Carve the strip and fillet off the bone in slices across the grain.
Sauce bordelaise takes its name from Bordeaux and its identity from the wine of that region reduced with shallots and bound with a brown sauce; poached marrow is its classic garnish. Pairing it with an American porterhouse is characteristic of the restaurant cooking this book records: Filippini and his contemporaries worked in kitchens where French method was applied to whatever the American market supplied, and the porterhouse — a cut named, traditionally, for the porter-houses of early nineteenth-century New York and Boston that served it — was among the most prized steaks available. The instruction to broil over charcoal is a reminder that professional kitchens of the period kept a dedicated grill fire, and that the gridiron over coals, not the pan, was the standard for steak long before the backyard grill existed.