Recipe

Filet Steak

with Rosemary Potato Cake, Fresh Asparagus and Tomato Comfit with exotic crab sauce

This is the signature dish of the new Doug’s Steak House at 30 Tsvetnoi Boulvar and was created by the Executive Chef, Tim Freeman, who presides over the kitchens of the Steak House and the adjacent Blowfish, Japanese Fusion restaurant.

Tim recommends that you use only the best quality beef with lots of marbling. The meat cooks in the marbling so you don’t need cooking oil. Setting the steak aside to ‘rest’ allows the juices to be drawn back into the flesh so you don’t get blood spurting out when you cut into it, even if rare. Many people use a charcoal grill for cooking steaks. Tim decries this habit, as it produces a very dry steak. All the juices and natural fats drip down onto the pan leaving the meat dry.

Preparation

Dust filet with salt and black pepper to taste
Grate potato, discarding juice
Chop rosemary
Chop chives (keeping separate), and keep stalks
Crush garlic clove
Garnish
Crush chives in olive oil, making a green paste that should not be too watery. Set aside.

Rosemary Potato Cake
Take the grated potato, mix with rest of the rosemary, all the parmesan, salt and black pepper, add a whisked large egg, fill a former (a flat round ashtray will do at a pinch), add a few drops of olive oil and press down until it is a perfect disk about two or three centimeters deep. Empty the round of potato onto a plate. The round should retain its shape and add a few drops of olive oil to both sides and place in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Cooking
Tomato Comfit
Wash and quarter tomato, add about a third of the chopped rosemary, mix in salt, pour in a tablespoon of olive oil and place all in a baking dish and put in the oven at 100 degrees for one hour.

Potato Cake 40 minutes after the comfit has been in the oven, heat a teaspoon of olive oil in a saute pan; place the potato cake in the pan and gently fry for ten minutes, without turning; then place in oven beside the tomato comfit.

Steak
Heat a saute pan on high heat, drop in the steak, turn over until there is a brown crust on all sides, then reduce heat to medium and keep cooking, turning occasionally for seven to ten minutes depending on how you like your steak done. Remove the pan from heat and set aside to ‘rest’ for ten minutes.

Spinach
Melt the butter in a skillet, toss in the spinach leaves, salt to taste, mix in the crushed garlic and cook until spinach leaves are soft.

Exotic Crab Sauce
Place the cream in a sauce pan, bring to the boil, reduce heat, add crab meat, salt and white pepper to taste, return to the boil for five minutes or until reduced by 50%

Serving
Place the potato cake in the center of a large plate
Add the spinach
Add the tomato comfit
Add the steak on top, pour the crab sauce over
Add a few sprigs of chives on top
Sprinkle chive oil from a tablespoon in drops around the edge of the dish