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This is definitely a luxurious dish if you are a meat lover. I always get my steaks at Costco where I can get different cuts of AAA Alberta beef for very reasonable prices. My favourite is the strip loin steaks, they are always precisely cut in the same shape. And I love the thickness, which always helps to produce the perfect doneness of medium rare.

I was having the boys over for dinner. It had been a while since I had them over considering they used to be my regular dinner party guests. But believe it or not, this was the first time I cooked something from The French Laundry Cookbook for them, so I decided to make something rather extravagant! Roasted Rib Steak seemed like a big project! As I didn’t want to over stress myself, I just picked the Cucumber Jelly and Crab Salad that I made a week ago, and the Apple Kuchen as the other 2 courses, so that I can mainly focused on the main course with the rib steak!

As this was the first time I cooked double-cut rib steak, and it was a gigantic cut (almost 4 lbs), I had to cut it into 2 steaks. It took me quite some time to French the bone. I think it is time for me to invest in a good paring knife or boning knife. I however did not tie up the steaks since they were pretty firm and intact. And they were seasoned with a great amount of kosher salt and some freshly ground black pepper. And I took the steaks out of the fridge more than 1 hour before I cooked it. It is important to cook the steak in room temperature so the steak will be cooked more evenly.

And I was happy to use my home-made veal stock again for the Bordelaise sauce. Basically I brought the wine, vegetables, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and garlic to a simmer, simmered until almost all the liquid had evaporated, added peppercorns and veal stock and simmered for another 15 minutes. I pretty much started the sauce the first when I started preparing for the dinner. The outcome of the sauce was just amazing, it bound everything together on the plate tremendously.

Pommes Anna was quite labor intensive. First I needed to cook the prunes in chicken stock for about 20 minutes before the prunes turned soft. Then I finely shoppe the prunes along with shallots and added grey salt to taste. The potatoes needed to be grim into cylinders that were 2 inches in diameter. Then I used a mandolin to produces 1/16-inch potato slices, soaked the slices in a bowl of cold water to remove the starch, and dried the slices with paper towels. Then I layered the potatoes and prunes in a large stainless steel pan following the recipe – A layer of clarified butter -> 2 layers of potatoes -> 1 layer of prunes -> 2 layers of potatoes -> 1 layer of prunes -> 2 layers of potatoes -> 1 layer of clarified butter, with seasoning the layers of potatoes with grey salt and ground black pepper. Then I cooked the whole pan on low heat for 4 minutes before transferring the whole pan into the oven (preheated to 450F) to cook for another 30 minutes.

Time to cook the steaks! I seared each side of the steaks for 5 minutes on hight heat, poured off the grease from the steaks, added the butter, and placed the pan in the oven for another 25 minutes. I was supposed to baste the steak every 5 minutes but I ended up only basting it twice over the 25 minutes. After roasted, the steaks rested for another 10-15 minutes.

When the steak was in the oven I cooked the chanterelle.

I couldn’t find fresh chanterelle, so I used the dried ones from Whole Foods. They just need to be hydrated in the water for a couple hours. Once they were hydrated, I used paper towels to absorbed the excessive liquid from the mushrooms.

I cooked the mushrooms with simply butter, kosher salt and black pepper until it was slightly toasty.

Oh my, the steak was amazing and the Bordelaise sauce was just fabulous! The quality of the beef was impeccable and tasted heavily even though it was a bit rare. But the boys ate it all up like some hungry lion cubs. Pommes Anna was something different from anything they ate before – although it sounded kinda sweet, but it was actually well balanced with sweetness and savoury. I would definitely make this again when chanterelle is in season!

I broke the camera of my phone so I was not able to take some good pictures during my cooking. But I borrow Morgan’s phone to take a couple pictures of the final products.

My Recipe for Serving 6

Cote de Boeuf

1 double-cut rib steak (3.5 lbs)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Canola oil

Bordelaise Sauce

1 cup Cabernet Sauvignon
1/3 cup sliced shallots
1/3 cup sliced carrots
1/4 cup sliced mushrooms
10 sprigs Italian parsley
2 sprigs thyme
1 bay leaf
2 tbsp sliced garlic
6 black peppercorns
1 cup veal stock

Pommes Anna

1 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp minced shallots
gray salt
2 lb Yukon Gold pottoes
6 tbsp clarified butter
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Chanterelle Mushrooms
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup chanterelle (0.5oz dried or 3 oz hydrated), cut into 1-inch pieces
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

pea tips for garnish.