Steak Diane - of a sorts

I was feeling like a steak dish - having just watched Alton Brown do an episode of Good Eats on sauces. I remembered a steak dish that Tina's brother Tony used to make. Basically sauteed steak with mushrooms and bell peppers. He called it Steak Diane. So I looked the dish up and found a version by Emril Lagasse. Totally different. This is a dish made with filet mignon medallions, quick seared on each side and then served with a sauce quickly made. This is many times cooked to order table side in good restaurants. Well I didn't want to use filet, I wanted to use the much cheaper (and tougher) eye of round steaks which were on sale. And to use that I figured I'd need to let it simmer for a bit to get it a bit more tender. Following is what I came up with - quite a bit different; but probably similar taste. I made extra sauce, so that I could let it simmer for a while and also because I served it with angel hair pasta and wanted some sauce to put on the pasta. As always - all amounts are approximations.

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• 6 eye of round steaks - 2.5 lbs in the family pack
  
• salt and fresh *coarse* ground pepper to taste
  
• 1/2 stick butter
  
• 1/2 a Leek - some from both ends
  
• 3 cloves of garlic minced
  
• about 8 mushrooms slice
  
• 1/4 C brandy
  
• 1/2 C heavy cream
  
• 3 tsp deli mustard (Batampte from the Broadway Deli here in the Springs rocks!)
  
• 3 or 4 "dashes" of Worcestershire sauce
  
• 1 C beef broth
  
• 1/4 stick butter
  

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We have a pepper grinder that is really coarse. This is great, if you like pepper, because the sauce ends up with chunks and almost has a peppercorn sauce type feel to it.

Melt the butter and saute the steaks until they are slightly browned. Move them to the edge and saute the leeks until wilted then add the garlic for a minute or two then the mushrooms until they are cooked.

Remove the meat and veggies and deglaze the pan with the brandy. (I tried to burn it off like Emril said; but I think the pan was hot enough and there was enough butter left that it didn't light. It was fine). Add in the cream, mustard and Worcestershire and whisk until smooth - let simmer for a minute or so. Add in the beef stock, whisk and reduce for maybe 10 minutes. This is similar to doing a Marsala sauce - just letting it thicken a bit.

Add the meat back in; cover with the veggies and let cook for 15 minutes or so. The idea here is to let the meat tenderize a bit and for the sauce to thicken even more.

Right before serving take the meat and veggies out; add the rest of the butter and whisk till melted. Serve the steaks with veggies on the top and side and then spoon some of the sauce on the top and across the pasta (if you serve it with pasta).

To me it didn't have a *strong* mustard or brandy taste; just a really nice rich cream sauce. All in all a pretty simple dish that was very tasty.

As I walk back up and down the stairs for the 2nd time in one minute...

While some are very irritated with the fact that as they get older they tend to forget things and have to keep walking back and forth between rooms for things they forgot... I tend to think of it as God's way of making sure we get *some* exercise as we get older.