I cooked twice today, which is unusual. I eat cereal or oatmeal for breakfast. During the week, I usually eat out or take a sandwich to work for lunch, and then I cook dinner. On the weekends, I generally reheat leftovers for lunch. Today, though, I made a nice soup for lunch (documented in a previous post), then went out to do some food shopping and pick up a pizza on the way home. While at the food store, I found a couple of lovely beef tenderloins in the hippie food section, and decided that would be dinner. I pan fried one of them (two minutes on the first side, one and a little more on the second), steamed up some broccoli and made some couscous on the side.

For the couscous, I heated up a little olive oil (2 tbs?) and tossed in a handful of peanuts (roasted unsalted) and two minced garlic cloves. After these cooked for a couple of minutes, I cooked the couscous with this and some beef stock.

While the steak was resting, I skimmed the foam off the leftover butter in the pan, then dumped about half of it off and added 1/3 cup of red wine (some Cheap Côtes du Rhône I found at the aforementioned food store) and a sliced shallot. I cooked that down about halfway and added 1/3 cup of beef stock and a little demiglace. I cooked that down not quite halfway. I should have cooked it a bit more. I whisked in two tablespoons of butter and some fresh thyme. Yes, that's a lot of butter, but that's really almost three servings of sauce. It's difficult to make pan sauces for one without wasting some ingredients.



It's hard to see from the first picture how rare this steak is. Yum!