Steak in Artichoke purée

Ingredients:
-A nice tender beef steak, Entrecôte recommend
-10 Holland bean or any vegetable with natural sweetness
-One artichoke
-Fresh cream and 30g butter/evoo
-Guerande salt
-Fresh grounded black pepper
-A shot of cognac

Artichoke is actually a fairly time consuming vegetable to prepare but you will be compensated with a wonderful gourmet taste, all you need is a spoon and a very sharp knife. First, cut the stalk, and cut the half top off, set the artichoke on the cutting board, start to trim the green part of the artichoke just like how you cut the orange, grapefruit skin. Then cut it in half and use the spoon to take out the hair (that's the choke) and voila! you have the artichoke heart ready to go! This preparation should not take longer than 1 minute. (Exclude the doubt time in your first try)

In a small pot, bring water to boil, cook the holland beans no more than 30 seconds, then immerse in cold water to keep it fresh and green. Same pot, cook the artichoke heart till the fork can easily penetrate it. When the artichoke heart is ready, together with the fresh cream (just good enough to make your mixer spin, you don't want the cream to overwhelm the taste of the lovely artichoke), guerande salt, and butter or evoo (extra virgin olive oil) optional. And this is the artichoke purée good to go with any red meat.

Trim your steak in smaller size before you cook it, the meat need to have the maillard reaction (when you cook the meat in hot environment, the surface of the meat turns brown and hard, sometime crispy) to seal the juice, remember to dry the steak before you put it into the pan to get the best result. When the steak is ready, season it with guerande salt and pepper, take it out and pour a shot of cognac into the pan, burn the alcohol (or not :-D), there you have the pepper cognac sauce (remember when we seasoned the steak with pepper before you took the steak out!)


Note:


1. Many people wonder which part of the artichoke is edible, my answer to that will be, try it once, because no one can tell you what you should like or dislike, follow your own instinct and discover your own taste, be open and try everything at least twice.

2. If you are interested in how and what is maillard reaction, read the book of Herve This, Kitchen Mysteries

3. Pepper will give a strange taste if your over heat it, if you are to marinade something, use the whole grain or just smash it so you can still take it out when cooking

Wine note:

We had it yesterday with a bottle of italian wine from Barbaresco 2004 and it works perfectly well with the peppery, natural sweetness from the meat, the artichoke and the holland bean.