My old-fashioned butcher (which is not a bad quality at all in a butcher) is slowly catching up to new trends, and is now dry aging beef. I picked up a dry aged strip steak (called entrecote in the Netherlands) and decided to use what I had that needed to be used up to create a dish. This happened to be some parsnips, a zucchini, and some potatoes. Here is what I did…

Ingredients

For 2 servings

1 dry aged strip steak, about 400 grams (.9 lb)

125 ml (1/2 cup) beef stock

1 star anise

2 parsnips

1 zucchini

500 grams (1.1 lb) waxy potatoes

15 grams (.5 oz) freshly grated parmigiano reggiano

olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

I seasoned the strip steak with salt and freshly ground black pepper on both sides.

Then I vacuum sealed it.

Even though it has already been dry aged, I decided to ‘warm age‘ it some more.

First I ‘warmed’ it for an hour at 39.5C/103F…

…and then for another hour at 49.5C/121F.

I the meantime, I perfumed the beef stock by combining it with a star anise in a saucepan and bringing the stock to a boil…

…and then reduced the heat to very low and cover the saucepan. Star anise works very well with beef and with parsnips, and will help to tie everything together.

The advantage of owning two sous-vide devices is that you can cook stuff sous-vide at two different temperatures simultaneously. So I decided to cook the parsnips and the potatoes sous-vide as well. I peeled the parsnips, cut them into slices, and vacuum sealed them.

I peeled the potatoes, cut them into cubes because I thought that would look nice, and reserved the remaining potato scraps to make mashed potatoes the next day. (Too bad potatoes aren’t square, as that would make it a lot easier to cut them into cubes!)

I vacuum sealed the potato cubes as well.

Then I cooked the parsnips and the potatoes sous-vide at 84C/183F for an hour.

Meanwhile, I cut the zucchini into slices and fried them in a frying pan in olive oil…

…until both sides were golden brown.

When the parsnips were cooked, I took them out of the bag…

…and put them in a blender. I blended them, adding a bit of milk if needed…

…and added 15 grams of freshly grated parmigiano.

The nice thing of using a strong blender like a Vitamix, is that the parsnip puree will be very smooth without having to sieve it.

I put the parsnips puree into a saucepan, and seasoned it to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

When the potato cubes were cooked, I took them out of the bag and patted them dry with paper towels.

Then I fried them in olive oil in a frying pan…

…until golden brown on all (well, most) sides.

When the strip steak was finished ‘warming’, I took it out of the bag and patted it dry with paper towels.

Then I browned it quickly in a frying pan with some rendered beef fat over very high heat (use vegetable oil or clarified butter if you don’t have rendered beef fat). This should only take 30 seconds to 1 minute per side, to keep the steak medium rare. (If you like your steak well done, you are visiting the wrong blog…)

I took the strip steak out of the pan, and deglazed the pan with the star anise-perfumed beef stock (discard the star anise).

I reduced this stock by about half over medium high heat to create a flavorful sauce.

Finally I plated everything, ‘artistically’, on preheated plates.

Wine pairing

We enjoyed this with a Ribera del Duero, an oaked tempranillo from Spain. A Rioja, which is also oaked tempranillo in most cases, would have worked just as well.

Flashback

Carnitas are Mexican food at its best: braised pork with tortillas, pico de gallo, and avocado or guacamole. Of course I couldn’t resist to make a sous-vide version.