Helen and I get two meals a week from each of Home Chef and Hello Fresh. Usually we eat them Monday through Thursday and cook from scratch on Friday and Saturday. This week, however, we delayed one of our Hello Fresh meals to Friday night: Bavette Steak in Sherry Shallot Sauce with Crème Fraîche Mashed Potatoes & Roasted Green Beans. It's a pretty good menu kit, but I've made some substantial tweaks that I think significantly improve it.
Start with the Bavette steak. Bavette is a fancy name for a cut taken from the bottom sirloin butt. It comes from a part of the cow near the flank steak, which it resembles. Hello Fresh recommends sautéing the steaks for 5-7 minutes per side. I find the result very unsatisfactory. It's not very tender and easily gets past medium-rare.
Here's what I do instead:
- I give the steaks a quick bash all over with my Jaccard 48-Blade Meat Tenderizer.
- I then dry marinade the steaks by rubbing them all over with a mix of 2 parts kosher salt, 1 part black pepper, 1 part onion powder, 1 part garlic powder, and 1 part Creole seasoning.
- I then vacuum seal each steak in its own 1 quart plastic bag using my Weston Vacuum Sealer.
- The bags go into a large 12 quart spaghetti cooker filled about ⅔ full of hot water along with my Breville Joule Sous Vide. I set the sous vide's temperature to 133° and the timer to 100 minutes.
- I preheat a Le Creuset Square Skillet Grill Pan to 375° (as measured by my infrared thermometer).
- After removing the steaks from their bags and patting them very dry with paper towels, I sear them for about 90 seconds on each side. I let them rest and then slice them thinly against the grain.
Hello Fresh gives you two packets of crème fraîche for the mashed potatoes and 1 of sour cream for the sauce. I use one the packet of the crème fraîche for the sauce and put the sour cream and the other packet of crème fraîche in the potatoes.
As for the sauce, I melt a pat of butter in a nonstick skillet. I add a half tablespoon of chopped shallot and cook, stirring, until softened, 1-2 minutes. I then add a teaspoon of minced garlic and cook for 30 more seconds. Next I add 2 teaspoons of the provided sherry vinegar and 1 teaspoon of dry sherry. I let that mix reduce by half. Then goes in the packet of beef stock concentrate, ¼ cup water, and a half tablespoon green peppercorns. Simmer the sauce for a couple of minutes, remove from heat, mix in the reserved packet of crème fraîche, 1 and a half teaspoons of Dijon mustard, and 1 tablespoon butter. Return to heat and simmer until it thickens slightly, stirring to combine. Season with salt and pepper.
I prepare the potatoes as directed, except for swapping in the packet of sour cream.
Instead of roasting the green beans, I microwaved them in their bag (cutting a small hole in the top first) for 3 and a half minutes.
I like my version a LOT better.
With it we drank a Ridge Vineyards Three Valleys (Sonoma County) 2019. It's a blend of 73% Zinfandel, 13% Petite Sirah, 10% Carignane, 3% Mataro, and 1% Alicante Bouschet. (I always wonder whether that 1% really matters.). It was delicious. Full of fruit and youthful vitality. Blackberry, raspberry, briars, and warm spices. A note of pepper on the finish. Not a vin de grade, but a great match for steaks or BBQ in the short term. Grade: A-
