Tim McKirdy: Sother, back to beef for another French bistro classic — Steak au Poivre.

Sother Teague: Love it. One of my favorites, to be honest.

TM: First real steak we've done. We did Carne Asada, but this is more the steak dinner. Treating the steak lover in your life. Maybe treating a man in your life, treating your dad or whatever, you know?

ST: Timely. It's timely.

TM: I like that. It's timely and topical for us. I'm gonna put my cards on the table here very early on. A, I've never cooked this dish, Steak au Poivre, the classic version, in restaurants — which is very strange considering my background is essentially classical bistro French cuisine. And secondly, despite having lived in Argentina, I'm not the biggest steak fan.

ST: Wow. Yeah, I'm shocked to hear that 'cause I certainly have. This is coming as a shock to me. But maybe not. When I'm at your house and we cook together, it is largely — especially when we cook outside on the grill — it's largely pork and chicken.

TM: I mean, don't get me wrong, I love beef. But I really do gravitate more towards the sort of low and slow, braised, smoked, whatever. Something about it where it just can never live up to the standing in my mind.

ST: I'm a, I'm certainly an omnivore. I'll eat anything that someone's already eaten. But steak is high on my list. Just a piece of meat treated well is high on my list. And I love Steak au Poivre for a number of reasons — that one I just mentioned, but I also love it because I happen to be a real big fan of peppercorns in general.

TM: The au poivre is the thing that I love about this. I will order this for that reason — the sauce and the preparation. The beef for me though is just the protein vehicle. And here's the thing. We will get into this much more when we do a deep dive on the cut for today's episode. But either you have amazing texture and not a lot of flavor, or you have incredible flavor and the texture can be a little bit tough to navigate. Challenging to navigate. And then just when it comes to dry-aged, nah, I'm out. Anything too funky.

ST: Challenging. Well, you used the word tough, but I was gonna say a little challenging. I'm starting to notice this about you. Is this why you maybe veer away from smoky bacon? You don't like the funky, smoky.

TM: That's more just the penetration of smoke and the overwhelming. I like it, but I don't know. Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited for the dish and the conversation. Hit me with your rhythm stick, elevator pitch, whichever one you prefer.

ST: Steak au Poivre is steak crusted with cracked peppercorns, seared hard, and served with a rich pan sauce traditionally built from Cognac, stock, and cream. Uh-oh, have we already gone off the rails for you? You don't like cream? You don't think so? I've never served it anywhere without a little cream.

TM: It's not classic. It's an American addition. It is not the... Canonically, nay cream.

ST: Ne cream. Well, we'll get into that when we get down to the negotiables and non-negotiables.

TM: But we'll get into that. You are right, though. I've worked... The first-ever restaurant where I worked, I was a food runner. We had different... It was called The Grille, with an E on the end of grill for some weird reason. These were the aughts, you know? Jimmy John's or Grilly Bar.

ST: These were the alts. Jimmy Canyon's Bar and Grill and Bar Grilly.

TM: Grilly. We definitely had all manner of steaks on the menu, and you know, when someone ordered it, you got a side of either béarnaise or peppercorn sauce. Now, it's not the au poivre preparation, but that sauce, and certainly that was coming through in that kinda purply, if I wanna be generous, gray, if I'm being realistic, color. Which you only achieve through addition of cream.

ST: At its brass tacks also, Steak au Poivre means... the literal translation is steak with pepper, right? But what it is at its core is a great example of how French cuisine can elevate just a handful of ingredients to a very luxurious place. Doesn't take much to make this dish, and this dish will deliver.

TM: Is it with pepper or, like — I thought au is more like of, or in the preparation of?

ST: I think it'd be a pepper steak. In the more colloquial, if we translated it directly into English, it would be pepper steak. But steak — steak of pepper, yes.

TM: Pepper steak, yeah. Give me some chicken-fried... oh, au poivre... then I'm in.

ST: All right. Listen, that sounds doable to me. Let's get a cube steak and make a chicken-fried steak and serve it with an au poivre sauce. I'm in. Now we're getting into bonus episodes.

TM: Now you're starting to speak my language. Let's get into the origins now.

ST: That's up to you. It already sounds like I'm off-track with my addition of cream, my Americanization.

TM: It's certainly part of the story, part of the evolution. I think this is probably an obvious point to note, but I do wanna make the distinction — as sometimes we do — where we're talking about the roots of something that predate the dish and the preparation. Pepper-crusted meat goes way back further than the origins of this as a codified dish. From the 18th century, food historian Sarah Lohman has traced a pepper-crusted venison recipe all the way back to Martha Washington's household collection of recipes. So we're talking late 1700s, early 1800s — probably late 1700s, 'cause I think she passed early in the 1800s. And we're talking pepper as a crust. We're not just talking about seasoning with pepper. There is a French steak historian called Francis Marie that... Steak historian. Other people cite them as steak specialist. Everyone cites them, and I'm saying them because I don't know how this person identifies, or their sex, because all I can find are the references to this thing that they claim, but I couldn't find a bio of this steak specialist.

ST: I love the position of steak historian.

TM: Everyone says the same thing. So they might have been completely made up. But many sources point to Francis Marie saying that Steak au Poivre originated in the bistros of Normandy, and the supposed appeal was pepper's reputed aphrodisiac qualities. How many times does that come up in Sauced?

ST: I think it's come up a lot, and I think it's gonna continue to come up because we as a species wanna tie this sensual act of eating — just eating can be a sensual thing. I think we wanna tie that back to the sensual act of carnal desires, et cetera. So I think it's gonna pop up over and over. How many can you think of off your head? If we sat here and went back and forth, we could get to 50.

TM: Yeah, and of the dishes we've covered, maybe 10. And those reported qualities would have been apt for the late-night supper crowd who were taking out their companions after the theater. I am slightly skeptical of all of that just because I can't find any record of Francis Marie, who this steak specialist is. But also, that was late 19th century. A couple years later in 1903, Auguste Escoffier — our guy, been a while since we brought him up — he published Le Guide Culinaire, which we've mentioned a lot, and in it he provided a sauce poivrade, which was essentially the pan sauce that we're gonna be talking about today, heavy with peppercorns and stock espagnole. But he assigned it specifically to game — like deer, boar, and hare — and not steak. Nobody likes hair...

ST: Nobody likes hair in their food.

TM: ...in their food. So between the Sarah Lohman / Martha Washington American story, where it was venison, and Escoffier with game, my thinking is the pepper crust existed originally to mask or dial down the heavy flavors.

ST: That's where I was gonna say something similar. The heavy flavors of game meat in general at the time, and probably a little bit of rot as well. We're staving off... We're not doing anything to cure or stop it. We're simply, as you said, masking it. And I'm curious, 'cause one of the things that was commonly used with game — or is commonly used with game — is juniper berries. So I'm curious if there were juniper berries in the original au poivre or poivrade.

TM: This makes... I wonder whether... When game season came around in the bistro, the first thing — whether you're butchering wood pigeon, deer, venison, certainly hare — first thing you do, butcher it down, get it in vac pack bags with olive oil, juniper berries, black pepper, bay leaf, and you gotta let that sit and rest for a day or so just to kind of dial everything down, synthesize. So I don't know whether juniper would work in the sauce, though. I feel like it might be too astringent and bitter.

ST: I do too. I'm just curious if that was the norm of the day. I don't think it would be the norm of today, but I'm curious because that was so commonly used with game. And again, in an effort to hide flavors and aromas, the astringency's not the worst part of the puzzle here.

TM: And also make sure you're saving that blood for your sauce. Jugged hare. No, hare was definitely not one of my favorite preparations. So steak — how does steak enter the equation? Well, there are five competing claims, all from Paris between 1905 and 1930. Much younger than we realize.

ST: So again, relatively young.

TM: All of them tied to pretty storied institutions. One of them is from the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. One of them to a place called Maxim's in Paris, which was the destination restaurant in the Belle Époque. But the one that kind of persists and the one that became most famous — and also led to the four other chefs coming out of the woodwork and saying, "No, that's wrong. This is a lie" — a chef called Émile Lerch at Restaurant Albert on the Champs-Élysées. He claimed to have pioneered or invented this dish in 1930. In 1950, in an article published by La Revue Culinaire, it recounted the Lerch origin story, and he said that what happened in 1930 was the restaurant received a shipment of premium, high-quality frozen American beef. The meat looked excellent, but upon thawing and cooking essentially tasted of nothing. What compounded the issue was his clientele at the time, mainly American tourists — Americans who were in town to indulge in cocktails because they could no longer do so at home — and we have the wonderful American bar and whatnot.

ST: Right. Harry's American Bar, yeah?

TM: What is it? Harry's? Harry's American Bar. Yep. So they would come to dinner after — I'm quoting here, or paraphrasing — "blowing out their palates with aperitifs, martinis, and whatnot at the bar." They come in, so they can't taste anything. So on the one hand, he has meat that looks amazing but is essentially flavorless, and he has a clientele who can't taste anything because they're drinking too many cocktails. And he said, "Here's a fix. Let's heavily crack pepper on both sides, cook it that way, create the pan sauce, serve, and everyone's happy." So there's a great irony to all of it — a technique that was pioneered to make flavor more subtle is now being applied because there is no flavor. And I would assume he learned of those techniques being classically trained and applying it to game meats. That article goes live, and then subsequently the four other chefs start writing into the magazine going, "No, this is wrong. I was before it." Because of all of the five claims of who came up with this dish, chronologically, he was the latest by some measure.

ST: Of course. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Isn't that how you operate with your writings?

TM: Only if I'm writing fiction. So yeah, that's the origin, and then we have some dates when it comes to American adoption of this. Notably, like I said, no cream in the original, and then the American adoption I think will overlap very nicely with our culinary luminaries. So I'm gonna hand it over to you, and some familiar faces, I hope, this time around.

ST: Well, yeah, oddly enough, I do have Émile Lerch in here. Not that he had said anything, but my notes say, "Often cited in discussions of early modern French restaurant cooking, though not definitively as the inventor." So I was hoping you would come back with that, and you kinda did. I also have listed Auguste Escoffier, who really helped codify French cuisine in general. And of course, he was alive when — I think he died in, like, '35 — so he was alive when this happened. Certainly he did not invent it, but he had influence over the environment that made this dish famous then, and continues to be famous. Henri-Paul Pellaprat — I'm probably butchering his last name — the co-founder of Le Cordon Bleu, the world-famous cooking school, wrote prolifically about many classic French preparations, including peppered steaks and Cognac cream sauces. That's where I was like, "Well, is cream part of this scenario?" I always thought it was. Everywhere I've worked that we served it, we finished with a bit of cream and then mounted with some butter, and we'll talk about that in preparation. Jacques Pépin — man, you can find a million versions from him in all of his books and all of his televised and filmed things. Notably, I found that he uses black, green, allspice — like the whole allspice that he coarsely grinds as well — along with Sichuan peppercorns. Which is also something that someone nearby to us is doing here in Brooklyn. There's a guy named Sam Braverman who operates a place called Lori Jayne, and he is becoming quite viral — I hate that term — with his Steak au Poivre preparation that uses a lot of Sichuan peppercorn, and he's getting a lot of attention for that. So this dish continues to fascinate and be a draw for people. Jacques says, "Don't overwhelm the steak with the sauce. The sauce should be a supporting actor." I kind of disagree with Jacques. The sauce is the dish. The peppercorns really make the thing, but then the sauce — I want a lot of it.

TM: I gotta disagree with Jack on that one. The sauce is the dish for me.

ST: I want a... It's... I'm from the Deep South, as you know. This is less, quote-unquote, "sauce" and more gravy. I want a lot of this. Julia Child says, "The pepper should be treated as a bold ingredient with a flavor all its own rather than a mere spice."

TM: 'Cause I gotta have some for my fries that I'm definitely having with this. Come on.

ST: And I would put that in the same camp as — and I'm not using him as a luminary in this discussion — but Chef K-Paul Prudhomme, who did the same with blackening spice. You're almost over-seasoning... you think you're over-seasoning this thing, but the idea is the peppercorns are the star of this show. Bold ingredient with bold flavor all its own. Use it as in that regard. I have just two more here before we go too far with it. Bourdain is popping up again because he loved French bistro fare, and that's kind of where this lives, and it represented for him what he called unapologetically rich restaurant cooking, which he loved. And then another guy, Daniel Boulud, who I'm a huge fan of — he says, "I love côte de boeuf au poivre because it's a one-pan dish, a perfect harmony of pepper and beef." So even in that simple statement, he's saying it's opulent and luxurious, but it's pretty easy.

TM: Daniel Boulud notable for — and we haven't really spoken about the booze yet here, and I've got two booze points before we tie a bow in all of this — Daniel Boulud notable for including some red wine in the sauce as well, which I'm definitely not against.

ST: So sort of toeing the line between Bordelaise and au poivre?

TM: So he goes Cognac plus red wine, but also, should you wish, white wine. And I got a quote here from him: "To make a good Steak au Poivre, you need Cognac, and you need white or red wine, or you can mix half and half, and it's a little gentler and a little smoother." I don't know whether I want the sauce to be smooth. I want the heat and the flavor of pepper. We'll get into the distinction later. But I'm definitely not against the red wine. And then Julia Child — just to your point — having published the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in '61, many sources cite this as the first printed codified recipe in the US, which would track with Julia's track record.

ST: Sure. And only 30-ish years after it had been, quote-unquote, "invented" anyway, right?

TM: Yeah, for sure. Or 60 at max if we take it back to 1905. But Julia — and something we haven't spoken about yet — she was early-on anti-flambé. So one of the things many people will associate with this dish is the addition of Cognac and it being a pan sauce, you flambéing it. Certainly in the Belle Époque, you would have people preparing this tableside. I believe Emeril Lagasse started doing it tableside again as well at some point during his career. Wouldn't put it past him. But in her book, she notes: "We do not care at all for flaming brandy-ing with this dish. It is too reminiscent of restaurant show-off cooking for tourists." And I kinda see what she's saying here, and she also goes into the science, which we've discussed before. Flambéing something, you're only removing 25% of the booze maximum, and then it's cooking the sauce down that's gonna remove more of the booze, and you will never get it to zero. But Julia said, scientifically, the flambé really isn't needed or necessary. And I see what she's saying. Certain preparations can become kitschy, or the preparation, the theatrics of something will disguise badly cooked meat, or poor quality meat, or the sauce not being done properly. To quote one of your favorite phrases, "It's all sizzle, no steak." Kind of apt here.

ST: Yeah, I get it. I agree. I will say this — I saw a few different versions with Daniel Boulud, who we just spoke about, and in both of them, he uses the moment of flambé to also put the steak back in the pan so that the steak itself is getting kissed by those flames. So maybe we could argue for that. But yeah, it's largely showmanship. Again, if there's flames above your dish, they're not doing anything for the dish.

TM: So yeah, I'll agree. It's not a non-negotiable for me, and we'll get into the non-negotiables in a second. But before we do, we have to make a decision here. Prince or pauper's dish?

ST: Prince. Oh, I already know the decision. Prince. This is a prince's dish, and here's why. We're gonna probably talk about a pretty expensive cut of meat. We're gonna use fine spirits — Cognac. We're gonna debate cream, which would be a luxury product as well, or at least lends a luxurious mouthfeel. And then I wanna say this. It's something that I found out while digging around for this episode. Pepper was once among the world's most valuable spices. It was known as black gold because it was traded at the same price ounce per ounce as gold.

TM: I mean, I would argue it's much more useful than gold, even today.

ST: Certainly in the culinary world, yes.

TM: But, I mean, beyond currency, like, literally what do you use gold for? I'm sure there's definitely reasons why it is, but that's fascinating. But also, are these things apocryphal in a sense? We've said it about saffron before. We've said salt is salary. Maybe gold was just not worth as much historically. I don't know.

ST: Right? Yeah. Black gold. Not to be confused with Texas tea for the listener, but not for you. I'm sure you don't get the reference. The Beverly Hillbillies accidentally discovered gold on their land, black gold, Texas tea.

TM: Oh, like fool's gold? It's not really gold. They just call it... Oh, gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. I thought you were on about, like, fake gold. Very cool. Well, that's been our first section of the show here today, Sother. We're gonna take a quick break, and then we will be back with the non-negotiables, the aspects that define this dish.

ST: No, no, they discovered oil. Sorry, did I say gold? They discovered oil on their land. It's AKA black gold or Texas tea.

TM: All right. We're back. Hit me with your first non-negotiable.

ST: The two biggest non-negotiables are in the name, so I'll start with steak. What cut are we going for?

TM: We'll get into steak and we'll do a deeper dive on steak in a little while. And the other ingredient that you're gonna mention here... No, we're defining the non-negotiables.

ST: Okay. So it was given past the first two? So the next one is pepper. And I think we need a blend, so we'll talk about that. And they have to be cracked, right? Not ground or powdered.

TM: So yes, we want a mignonette.

ST: Yeah. Mignonette.

TM: Mignonette is a French adjective for something that's small and dainty and cute, essentially. It's a diminutive, but in a positive sense. So your mignonette sauce is cut that way. And your pepper, rather than being ground or whole, is crushed using a pestle and mortar into dainty little pieces of... Although it's not that dainty, it's not that uniform, but it's smaller. But yeah, I would say that is a non-negotiable for me. Cracked pepper, coarse, and I want mine done with the pestle and mortar.

ST: Yeah, me too. Or, if you don't have a mortar and pestle, you could fold... put your tea towel over and go whacking away at it either with your meat mallet or with the edge of a small saucepan.

TM: Or even just put it on your chopping board and get the base of your saucepan on there and just give it a good press. All right, I'll hit you with the next non-negotiable then. My turn. Booze. And I think Cognac is a non-negotiable.

ST: Why? Ooh. I was hoping we could maybe switch the gear and go to Armagnac.

TM: We'll say brandy so that we can cover all of them, and those are choices to be made. But a spirituous alcohol that has been aged. Jack, weirdly, later down the line, converted to Bourbon. This is what I love about Jacques, and we mentioned it with his carrots and his Bourguignon. I think it's the thing that he found most freeing about coming to the States. We had a quote from him in the Beef Bourguignon episode where it's like, I guess French cooking is so rigid that he felt like, 'Well, I'm here, and it makes sense.'

ST: For sure. No, 100%. Yeah, I think he definitely lives his life as "do what you can with what you have where you are." And I also think that he is a champion of getting people to cook. So if he can take away pretense, I think he does anywhere he can. So I don't fault him for doing that.

TM: I mean, the land of Bourbon. And also, Bourbon would go great in this dish. There's nothing against using it.

ST: You do what's around. Also, who knows? He was probably just like, "I'm gonna make this. Oh, I don't have any Cognac. I'll just use this." Even if that was on camera, he would just be like, "Well, we're gonna use this," and he wouldn't say anything about it.

TM: Yeah. Also the House of Bourbon, the French connection there, you know what I mean?

ST: Okay, so we got brandy, we'll say, but it's Cognac. We're gonna need some stock. Beef stock, pretty rich.

TM: How about we say a pan sauce... well, I mean, a pan sauce with which constituents? We're saying booze. We're saying stock, which I agree with. Let's say aromatics, shallots, garlic. I think those have to be in there as well. The pepper. Well, the pepper you're getting that's left over from the...

ST: The pepper that's on the steak. But I wanna add a heaping spoonful of green peppercorns to the sauce.

TM: And then I guess pan sauce as well. I think we can agree this is a non-negotiable. It'd be kind of hard to tell if this hasn't been done, but I think if you're claiming to make an authentic Steak au Poivre, you have to monter au beurre at the end.

ST: Yep. I can concede that I was led astray by the cream, but the butter has to be there.

TM: The cream is the debate. Let's have the debate now. I mean, there's so many things — the way Bourbon was made 200 years ago is very different to the way Bourbon is made today. So convince me. I have no skin in the game. It wasn't there in the 1930s. It's 1960s onwards, an American drift that adds it for richness.

ST: Well, there is no debate. If you say it wasn't in the original, then it wasn't there.

TM: Yeah, and I can see that. I just don't want it to be a cream sauce. I want it to be a seasoning rather than a...

ST: Well, let's go back to Émile Lerch and his conundrum with the delivery of frozen beef from America that had no flavor. Maybe the cream is there because a lot of American beef doesn't stack up against the fattiness of beef from elsewhere. So maybe the cream got added here in America because — I was in Europe and I had this dish and it was so rich and unctuous because the beef was so rich and unctuous.

TM: I'm not connecting the dots. Sorry, tell me again.

ST: But then I got here to America and the beef isn't as rich and unctuous. Like when I sit down and have a steak that's from Argentina, the fat is yellow and the beef is marbled. And certainly we have marbly delicious beef here in America. I'm not knocking, but generally speaking, the beef you're getting hold of — factory farmed, et cetera — is gonna be not as unctuous. I'm just throwing this at the wall. So maybe the cream was there to be like, "Let's reclaim some of what we're missing in that sort of unctuousness."

TM: I also suspect that part of it is down to — it seems French to us. Like more butter, more cream. That's what people say about their mashed potatoes or whatever. So it seems natural to us, and actually not having it... Or maybe people like Julia — you could also maybe argue that this is a safety net. Like if you burn your pan sauce or certain constituents of the pan sauce, or if you introduce some bitter elements or whatever, this is gonna mask things. It's gonna hide. It's gonna round out. It's gonna hide a few mistakes. And there's some technique to that, the pan sauce and the one-pan cooking.

ST: So I say — and it's changing my trajectory a little bit here — but we always do this. For you and I live on the show, we sort things out. I'm convinced. I wanna go creamless. Yeah, I do. Another non-negotiable here — the beef has to be seared hard. It's a crusted situation. And I'm gonna throw in, I wanna sear it in beef fat, which I always have in my freezer.

TM: I mean, yeah, that's not a non-negotiable though, right?

ST: Yeah, you're right. I'm really drifting on the non-negotiables today.

TM: It has to be seared. I'll say this — it needs to be seared in a fat that can withstand high temperatures without burning, and then I would hope that it's later being finished with butter basting in the pan before resting, before doing your pan sauce. But I agree. High-temperature searing, crusted, and a fat that will allow you to achieve that texture.

ST: Yep. The texture.

TM: That's a non-negotiable. Texture is the non-negotiable we're talking about here. That's all I got. All right, so two ingredients that I want us to do a deep dive on now. I'm gonna cover pepper. The main two — the two that are in the name. I'm gonna cover pepper.

ST: Let's get into it. The main two.

TM: Then I'm gonna come to my former butcher for all manner of steak questions and advice. So you mentioned pepper at one point — traded and as valuable as gold. I would argue, as I'm sure you would too, a Steak au Poivre is only as good as its pepper and the pepper being used. So that introduces some real decisions which you've sort of previewed or teased for us, like which peppercorns, how are you processing them, and what are the differences? Quick numbers for you though. Global production of pepper sits at five hundred thousand metric tons per year, and it's a commodity with a trade value annually of around three billion dollars. Vietnam is the number one producer in the world, accounting for thirty-five to forty percent of the world's supply, followed by Brazil, India, and Indonesia, which all land between eight and fifteen percent, and then Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Cambodia — put a pin in that one — and China round out the top ten producers in the world. Do you wanna hear about Cambodian pepper, or do you want us to get into the four stages of pepper first?

ST: Let's get into the four stages, 'cause I know you got some personal connections to Cambodia, so we'll dive into that too. Let's talk about pepper stages, 'cause that's what it is. I think maybe some of the listeners think that they're different peppers. It's all one pepper. It's different stages and different processes, right?

TM: Exactly. So it's the same vine harvested in four different ways, each resulting in a different flavor profile. Going from least ripe to most ripe — green peppercorns picked young and underripe, they are mild, herbaceous, and fresh. Many times they're brined or freeze-dried to achieve more of that texture of the peppercorns that you put in your pepper mill, the black one. Black peppercorns, also picked underripe, then they are dried in the sun whole, and the skin oxidizes, which is what turns them black. Very pungent pepper.

ST: Why are they so much bigger than green peppercorns? And I know we're talking, they're not big, but black ones are generally bigger than the greens, right?

TM: They are more ripe potentially. And it also may be something to do with the processing, right? And the fact that they're being... But sun-dried would normally reduce mass. I don't know. I haven't measured them, so I cannot...

ST: Yeah, maybe. They definitely are more ripe, so maybe they just grown a little bit more. Get out your calipers.

TM: Third out of four, red peppercorns. These are picked fully ripe, and they're dried whole with the skin on, but not sun-dried and oxidizing. They're fruity, sweeter. They're the specialty pepper here. And when we return to Cambodia, there's a specialty they have there. And then finally, white peppercorns. Those are picked ripe, soaked in water to remove the skin, then dried. It's cleaner, more aromatic, but less pungent. And it's also, as we know, when it's fully ground up, these are what you're using in classical French cuisine for your white sauces, so you don't get those flecks of black in there. So which out of those — curiously, I'm curious to hear — which out of those do you want for the dish?

ST: I kind of want a little bit of a blend here. As I mentioned, I think in the sauce I wanna throw in a spoonful of the youngest ones, the green brined ones, 'cause they bring a little something from the brine too. But then, as you said, they have a sort of... They're kinda like — I'm not gonna finish this sauce with a handful of chopped-up parsley. It's that green peppercorn that's gonna give me that bright lifting herbal quality. And then I don't need the pink/red peppercorns. I think we need black and white though.

TM: No red? Maybe I'll convince you otherwise shortly. Before we do, the quick bit of science. Two separate things we're relying on from this ingredient. Number one, piperine is the thing that gives it the heat. And that accounts for 2 to 9% of the peppercorn by weight, depending on where you get it from, how it was grown, how it's harvested. And this is a non-volatile compound, so that heat survives cooking. It doesn't change. If you cook it, it's not gonna get less fiery. Terpenes are what account for our aromatics. These are oils, essential oils — including limonene, citrus; pinene, pine resin; and sabinene, woody, slightly bitter. These are only released when we crack the peppercorns, or mignonette, and they evaporate within hours of doing so.

ST: And this is why it's highly important... I have five different pepper mills at home. It's highly important to grind your pepper to order as often as possible. Always. Let's do it always. If you've invested in peppercorns, invest in a pepper mill.

TM: And this is why if you buy ground white pepper, it doesn't really have a flavor, but it has that heat. So you're using that again as a seasoning rather than an ingredient, and I'm glad you made that distinction earlier. Because these compounds are volatile, when we add our pepper to the dish and we start cooking it, it vaporizes, and we get that in the aromas. And that's what you always point out to us.

ST: Aroma dictates 90% of flavor, which is crazy, but it's true.

TM: So that's the science. So Cambodia — I would have to say, I don't know many other people in my life who I've met who have been to a peppercorn plantation. And, by the way...

ST: Me? None. And by the way, I would love to go to one. I really do enjoy pepper. I just said I have five pepper mills at home, and I'm getting a couple of new ones because I just got some new peppercorns from a new company that just launched.

TM: Wow. Well, during my time living there, I did have the unexpected pleasure of visiting a peppercorn plantation in a region specifically called Kampot, which is in the southwest, I believe, of the country. It's pretty much almost on the coast, and there's a couple of coastal touristy towns there — some much nicer than others. But the quality of Cambodian pepper has been noted all the way back to the 13th century. A Chinese diplomat who was visiting wrote at that time in the 13th century that Cambodian pepper is the highest quality available in Southeast Asia. We're talking eight hundred years of reputation here. During the 1870s, the French occupying Cambodia at the time — and being definitely something of a culinary nation — they industrialized Kampot pepper production, established a bunch of plantations, and by the early 20th century, they were producing something like eight thousand tons a year, which is incredible. It's some way shy of the two hundred and sixty-three thousand tons that Vietnam pumped out in 2023, but notable. Then, as something I think a lot of people know Cambodia for — the Khmer Rouge, the Pol Pot regime, wiped out almost entirely pepper production. The fields were ripped up and replaced with rice. You can do your dive into history on that. You gotta feed the people. But they very much — this was an agrarian revolution, and they thought rice was the answer. So generations of knowledge was lost just due to the genocide, terribly, but also almost all of the rootstock was lost.

ST: You gotta feed the people.

TM: But in the early 2000s, a group of survivors revived production, found old rootstock, and got it up and running again. And in 2010, Cambodia awarded the Kampot region PGI — Protected Geographical Indication — status. And that was recognized by the EU in 2016. Currently, production sits at around 100 tons per year. If you find yourself in Southeast Asia — if you do find yourself in Cambodia and you're going to Kep or Kampot or those seaside towns — go there. It's just incredible. I was coming with sort of a wine hat on and vines and things like that. We saw them picking them at the different stages, but the red being the one they're most famous for. We saw the process of literally drying it out in the sun. They also had — they were also making sea salt there through a similar method. Very crazy.

ST: So wait, they're trying to tell you that salt and pepper go together?

TM: But yeah, that's my deep dive on pepper, and definitely not a humblebrag or whatever, but I was just fascinated by it.

ST: I am too. I've never really thought about it, but I would love to go to a pepper plantation, or whatever they're called. What — pepper farm? I don't know what it is. Pepper... is it vineyard? They're on vines. Is it a pepper... is it a pepper vineyard?

TM: They're on vines, yeah. I'm not too sure on the exact terminology. I believe the plantation is what it was billed as when I visited. They have — and this is my final thing on that — they have a regional dish in one of those towns. I think it is called Kep. They have the Kampot pepper, but they use the green peppercorns for this, and it's miniature crabs, but they're not soft shell. So this is a regional dish that they're super proud of. The sauce is delicious. The crabs are so small that it's just not worth — the juice ain't worth the squeeze when you're eating it. It's like a nightmare to eat.

ST: It's like stone soup. You're just sort of getting the flavor from the stone. You're not eating the stone.

TM: Eating the shell. Exactly. And I will say, it is quite fiery too, but I enjoyed it. Certainly finished my sauce, did not finish my crustaceans.

ST: Well, as has come up numerous times on the show, I love chilies and hot. I really am. But there's something... peppercorns are different. It's not capsaicin. It's not that kind of fiery. So it's a different thing altogether. But still for me — I'll mention it over and over — I have five pepper mills, and I'm getting three more. I don't think Scoville has anything to say about peppercorns 'cause they're not peppers. I don't know. We can look it up.

TM: Where'd your guy Scoville put it on his made-up... still heat? All right. Well, that's pepper. That's the au poivre. Hit me with the steak. Talk me through.

ST: Yeah, I'll give you a couple options here, but I think that even though it's not my favorite cut, it's the cut I would go with for this dish. Tenderloin, right? The filet mignon cut from the tenderloin, which always, always, always delivers on its promise that's in its name. It is a tender cut of steak. It doesn't boast a lot of flavor of its own, so that's why I think it's perfect for this dish, because this dish is all about the crusting of the peppercorns and the sauce.

TM: I am 100% in agreement with you on this one. However, no — I was thinking the same thing before we came on air. I was like, it ties in nicely to the Parisian origin story, the lack of flavor. The only part of me that has second thoughts is knowing that we're gonna have to go out and buy the ingredients and cook this dish and post the video on Instagram, and I'm like, "Ah, maybe one of the cheaper cuts might be the way to go." But I'm not. No, it's negligible.

ST: Well, yeah, we can get a couple steaks. We could actually do some side-by-sides if we want. Let's get a couple of steaks and make our video using different cuts and compare and contrast. But, I think, my favorite steak to have out on the grill is a ribeye. You've got kinda two different muscles that are in there, so you get two different textures. It's pretty fatty, really marbly. I like that fatty tail that's on the end. I don't think that's the right steak for this dish. I've never been the biggest fan of the strip steak, AKA the sirloin — the New York strip — which is — they call it the sirloin in the UK and Australia. Yeah, 'cause it was knighted. That piece of meat seems to not deliver the tenderness that I do want with this dish. Nothing wrong with those steaks. And then I mentioned a local chef here in Brooklyn right now, Sam Braverman.

TM: The New York strip — we call it the sirloin in the UK and Australia.

ST: His somewhat viral addition to the program here is he uses the flap of the chuck, which is really contingent on the way that he presents it. Once it's grilled to the temperature that he wants, he slices it very thin across the grain, of course. So it's already sliced for you. And their service is unique as well. It's served on top of a stack of fries, underneath the sauce, and with chopsticks. So it sort of tells you you don't need even a knife for this thing. So there's plenty of options. And again, if we have already agreed — and it seems we have — this dish is largely about the peppercorns and the sauce, then I say choose the steak you like the best, but know that each steak is gonna bring some characteristics. And I think, as your resident former butcher, I think the tenderloin... To be honest, this is the only use for the tenderloin for me. I'm not a Wellington guy, and that's not a steak. You know what I mean? Well, when we get to the Wellington episode, we'll cross that bridge.

TM: Don't use your blade, folks. So give me a cheat sheet. If I'm walking into the butcher's with no knowledge, you're saying filet mignon, it's gonna be the most tender, the least flavor. Ribeye, would that be on the opposite end of the spectrum? Fullest flavor, still quite tender.

ST: For sure. But it also is still quite tender. The New York strip steak is gonna be less tender, still flavorful, more flavorful than the tenderloin. So it's in the middle flavor-wise. Chuck flap is gonna be uniquely tender by the way you cut it on the plate once it's sort of completed. That would maybe leave that one out of the race.

TM: I'm gonna say that's not — again, there's the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. I don't think most people consider it... It's not what they think of when they think of steak.

ST: No, agreed. But I had listed it in the thing, so I just put it in that spectrum that you told me to put it down on. So yeah, I think in order of my preference and the reasons that I gave for it, it's tenderloin is number one, ribeye is probably number two, New York strip is number three, and way down at the bottom would be the flap. But no, there's no wrong answer.

TM: Very cool. All right. Walking out, we're armed with our fancy filet mignons.

ST: Well, wait, I think there is a wrong answer. Let me back up. I don't think you should apply this preparation to anything Wagyu. Too fatty, too unctuous. It would be just a poor economic use of any cut that's Wagyu. Just throwing that in.

TM: Fair point. Very fair point. Any other ingredients we need to get into? We said our pan sauce is gonna be shallots, probably garlic. We're gonna deglaze with Cognac. We're adding beef stock. Red wine, optional. Certainly not classic. Cream we said we're not gonna go with, and butter to finish. Anything I'm missing?

ST: Maybe a spoonful of Dijon? Maybe not.

TM: Very cool. Well, those have been the non-negotiables, the ingredients, a couple of deep dives on specific ingredients. Time for us to take a break, and then we're gonna be back with the preparation. All right, Sother, we're back. Preparation. I'm fully handing it over to you to convert all of our knowledge to a playbook.

ST: I think you're gonna start by pulling out your steaks and letting them temper a little bit. You're gonna then take your peppercorns. Did we come to a conclusion on the mixture? You said you wanted to add those pink ones in. Okay. Let's go then. We'll do all three of the dried ones in the crust, and we'll put the brined ones into the sauce. So we got a blend of our peppercorns, which we'll come up with a ratio for you, coarsely cracked... that's called what? Mignonette. No, sorry, who? Oh yeah, Maurice. That's our Maurice moment of the day. Maurice Mignonette of the day. Yeah, we'll sort it out. We'll fix it in post. So get your peppercorns cracked — as we mentioned earlier, like underneath the edge of a sauté pan or saucepan, or with a mortar and pestle. And then liberally crust the two sides of your steak. We don't need to get the side — this is a round cut of meat, right? With the tenderloin. So we want the flat parts. Get those two liberally crusted and let it sit for about 30 minutes while the steak is tempering. This will give you better adhesion. If you put the peppercorns on, even if you press them firmly, and then go straight into the pan, lots of them are gonna come off. So let it sit. They'll adhere a little bit better. And then don't salt this thing until we're getting ready to go into the pan, because we want it to sit for longer than we wanna have salt on there. Getting your pan nice and hot. We probably could have mentioned, you're probably gonna wanna use your cast iron or your carbon steel pan for this dish to have the better results. We're gonna try and ride the pan around medium-high heat for a couple of minutes to get it nice and hot. Wisps of smoke should start to appear before you go in with just a little bit of that high-smoke-point oil that we talked about. That can be beef fat or a high oil that you have on hand. And then we're gonna get in and sear the steak on both sides. Be mindful — I know that there's plenty of debate out there on moving your steak once you put it down. I'm of the camp that moving it is better. I wanna flip it every 30 seconds or so, but not in this case. I wanna create a crust, and also all that moving action will knock these peppers off. So to maintain the crust and to get the peppers to stay there, let's give it a good hard sear for two to three minutes before flipping it at all. Then flip it over during the final minute or two. Let's get some butter into the pan and do a little basting just so we get that even coating and kind of activate some of those oils that are in the peppercorns. And then we're gonna pull the steak out and let it rest, and then we'll start building a sauce. Building the sauce is gonna be bringing the heat down a little bit, going in with your aromatics, which we talked about — both shallots and garlic. Then we're gonna go in with the Cognac, which we decided to go with. And we're gonna reduce that by about half. Then go in with our rich stock, reduce that by about half, and then pitch in that heaping spoonful or so of the green peppercorns, and then start mounting with some cold butter till we have a rich, beautiful sauce, that then we can — I wanna just roll my steak back into that real quickly before putting it on the plate. Maybe sliced, maybe not, and then I wanna kinda drown the thing with this gravy. This isn't... I think that we're toeing a line here. We're going as far as we can with the word "sauce" without necessarily moving into the world of gravy. But I kinda want it to be gravy.

TM: I think they're synonyms. I think that's just an American thing. They're one and the same thing for us in the UK. Don't you worry about that, Sother.

ST: And then I think you already answered earlier the answer that I think we already had in our minds. What are we serving this with? So this is going on a plate with a bunch of frites, right? So fries, fries — which we've talked about in the past. Ooh. I have one thing I'd like to have, but it's not a requirement. Watercress is quite peppery. It's just backing up that flavor with a fresh note on the plate. So you got this... because otherwise you've got this sort of crispy brownish fries, this sauce that's gonna be kinda brown, this steak that's gonna be kinda brown, these peppers that are gonna be kinda brown. You got this brown palette. You throw in that watercress, and you've got this like green poppy thing.

TM: No, it is refreshing. It's kinda like biting into celery. It's a burst of water and pepper. And look, if it's too much for you — 'cause I know watercress is definitely a divisive ingredient — go arugula.

ST: And you don't need to do much to it, just a little spritz of vinegar and oil and a crack of salt. You're good to go.

TM: Olive oil. Fantastic. Sother, that's been the Cooking with Booze. We're about to drink with food, but before we do, you flew through that like a pro, as you always do. All I'm gonna say is, we were able to do so. We were able to keep up a good pace because we don't stop at every point to give the ingredient quantities and whatnot, because, as regular listeners know, we save that for our recipe cards, which are available exclusively to our paid subscribers. Seven dollars a month, 70 if you commit to the year. That's two free months. And look, let's lead with the price. You know what I mean? Like, I don't wanna hear — you go into a store and the guy's trying to sell you a sofa. I'm like, "Don't tell me about all the benefits. Tell me the price, and then I'll see if it's in my price range." If that is your price range, folks, if you're considering that, you get the recipe cards.

ST: Yep. You get ad-free listening. You get first right of refusal on events that Tim and I are doing. You get a little bit of a closer parasocial relationship with us because we respond quite regularly to inquiries and questions and comments on our social media as well as...

TM: I respond on behalf of me and Sother, 'cause Sother refuses to use a computer, folks. He covers social, I cover Supercast, which is the platform that you would sign up through.

ST: Right. And all you have to do is use your email that's associated with your account, and it'll unlock all this stuff for you automatically. And I love the bonus episodes, and I've already got an idea for the next one. It's all about molasses. I know it's not something you love. I know. Listen, you made me do tiramisu. I don't touch coffee.

TM: Ooh, my kryptonite. Speaking of which, we had a wonderful person reach out in the Supercast forum after Tiramisu went live and was saying, "Sother" — I believe it was the person's wife, like yourself — "doesn't drink coffee," and someone instead prepared the dish with red wine and what was it? Cocoa. Sounded delicious to me. So I love that as well, and we love when we hear that from folks. We see that you're listening, and we hear that you see us. Does that make sense? I don't know. Let's get into a break, and then we'll be back. And I'm telling you, we haven't been on it yet, but we will be back with the booze. All right, Sother, we're back. Have you got a cocktail for us here today?

ST: You know I do. But that's not usually where we start. I'm certain, again, with the deeply French nature of this dish, you have some wine suggestions. Let's hear them.

TM: Yep. Well, classically, obviously we're going red wine. I'm not gonna be too contrarian there. Classically, when you're talking pairing with steak, and you're thinking about what are you drinking in a steakhouse, we lean to tannin-heavy grapes. Your Bordeaux, Barolo, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Napa Cab — which, depending on the producer and the price range, but those things can be very, very tight and take a long time to kinda unwind. Those work great in the dish, and I'm not knocking them. But this dish has a secret pairing — or a secret aspect to it — that we're missing if we aim for our tannins, and that's a little chemical compound called rotundone. Yes. It's one of those terpiney compounds. Basically, it's the thing that gives black pepper its smell, and it's also present in a number of different grape varieties.

ST: Rotundone. I don't know what this is. Sounded good though. I liked saying it. Syrah? Yeah, baby. I knew it. 'Cause I think — as you know, I'm not the biggest wine drinker, but the one that always comes to my mind that I like is Syrah, and I think it's because I'm such a pepper person. What else you got?

TM: Syrah being number one. Northern Rhône and Southern. Black pepper. Also classical, but obviously you get Syrah in the Northern Rhône and the Southern Rhône, but most championed in the Northern Rhône. Those wines as well will have a kind of funk — and I don't mean funk like natural wine, natty wine. I mean like gamey, animalistic quality to them, which I think also probably really appeals to you. Which again, if we're talking steak and pepper, amazing. But some of those other varieties on the red side are Mourvèdre, Vespolina — very little known — and Schioppettino, an Italian one that's really kind of trendy these days. So if you wanna pair your wine and your dish on a molecular level, you can literally do it with this one. Therefore, if you wanna do that, look to any number in the Northern Rhône — Cornas, Saint-Joseph, Côte-Rôtie is gonna be the ones that are maybe most well known. Although they do have a bit of Viognier blended in there, which is kinda cool. I love that whole idea of blending red and white. And Crozes-Hermitage. Those would be your, "Okay, we're keeping it classic." If you wanted to abandon the molecular pairing here, like I did recently in a different episode, I'm just gonna give you some — these are cool, of-the-moment regions and producers and people to look out for that I think would work really well with this dish. Brought it up once before, Mencía from Bierzo. This is becoming one of those slightly lighter-bodied — I mean, they can be super heavy, but slightly lighter-bodied reds, the more modern versions of those — and you wanna look out for a producer called Raúl Pérez. I think he's got a nickname, like, they call him The Wizard or something of that region. But like, crazy looking dude, big hair, awesome. Very much a pioneer of modern Mencía Bierzo. Also close by, same grape, different region, Ribeira Sacra. Look for a producer called Guimaro. They sell at a bunch of shops here in New York. More on your Astors and Flatiron rather than just random neighborhood shop. But this thing — I mean, last time I bought a bottle, it was like 30 bucks, if that. So incredible quality. And then, yeah, the other one I would just say is that Schioppettino. You're staying cool, but you're getting that molecular pairing there.

ST: Neat. I think this is the fascinating part about wine pairing to me — when you can get that granular and side right up next to the dish or whatever you're having. I just wanna touch real briefly on beer, and I think it's because of our choice to use fries with this dish — which, again, I don't think was a choice. People are like, "What about mashed potato?" Yeah, no. With all that gravy? No, no, I want the fries. I think this is a... and we've talked about this beer before — a Belgian Dubbel — which we talked about when we talked about fries before. So it just stays the same to me. It just kind of belongs. And that's really the only — I have a couple others listed here, but the more I think about it, the Belgian Dubbel is the only choice for me. And then of course, I'm gonna make us a cocktail. I conceded on the spirit we used in the sauce to be Cognac, but I wanna make an Armagnac cocktail. And like people ask, "What is the difference between Cognac and Armagnac?" Well, Armagnac is a little bit more... If I had to just explain it to someone who'd never tried either, I would say Armagnac is a little bit more chewy and dense, and has more of those, like, dried fruit, the properties, where Cognac's a little bit leaner and thinner on the palate. And that's not knocking Cognac. I enjoy Cognac. In fact, I'm weirdly discovering about myself that I'm pretty fond of brandies in general. My life, as with everyone's life, I've changed as time goes on. And now when I look at my shelves at home, I see a lot more brandy than I ever saw before. I'm like, "What's going on there? Oh, it's 'cause I'm really into this." Anyway, I'm gonna make... And also what I really wanna do here with this drink is really stay true to France. So we're having this beautiful preparation that is clearly French. So let's go Armagnac. I'm gonna say one and a half ounces of Armagnac. I'm gonna say three-quarters of an ounce of Floc de Gascogne. And just for the listener, this is when we blend fresh grape juice with a young Armagnac for this super-fruity and aromatic aperitif wine, basically. So it's not really a vermouth, but let's think of this as a vermouth in this scenario. So we're gonna go three-quarters an ounce of Floc de Gascogne up against just a half an ounce of Yellow Chartreuse — which, by the way, Yellow Chartreuse is made by the Carthusian monks and has lots of floral aromas and flavors. And then two dashes of aromatic bitters. Angostura is your leaderboard here. And then we're gonna stir that and serve it over ice. If you got a big chunk of ice or a sphere, this is a great time to use that. And then just before passing it out to your guest or to yourself, one twist of your pepper grinder right over the top to give it this popping peppery aroma. So this is clear to me that I'm making a play here off of the Vieux Carré, but with different components that all remain true to France. So you get to name it as always.

TM: Struggling. Americans in Paris. 'Cause I believe the aperitifs that they were supposedly blowing their palates with before going for this flavorless steak — gin, vermouth, and absinthe, I think. Which makes sense, right? Kinda like an augmented Martini with just a little rinse. I can imagine how that would definitely... I don't know. Americans in Paris. I don't know. You're squeezing your eyes there.

ST: Why am I blanking on the name of it? That's a drink, right? Remember, we talked about it. It comes from just down the street from Arnaud's when we did the Oysters Rockefeller. A Martini augmented with a bit of absinthe.

TM: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I'm forgetting the name of it. It was in our Oysters Rockefeller episode, folks.

ST: Yeah, struggling to remember the name as well. Anyway, this drink is delicious, and I did make it — or I did mention it here as the drink for this episode — but I've made this drink. It is delicious. I have had this drink.

TM: I assume that you've made all the drinks that you bring to the episode.

ST: Well, sometimes they're theoretical, you know. And sometimes they're just classics. And then we get in the kitchen and we do it together.

TM: Very cool. Sother, final thoughts for us here today. What are people missing out on?

ST: You're missing out on a pure demonstration of classical pan sauce cookery, which can be applied to numerous things that you do in the kitchen, not just this specific dish, obviously. This dish is teaching you some things about pepper itself, how it changes under how it's ground and how it's cooked. It's teaching you about how what's left in the pan can become that sauce — the fond, we call it. How alcohol can contribute aroma qualities to your final dish. And this dish is also teaching us that there are plenty of examples of recipes, especially French ones, that have a litany of instructions because they're so complex. This one results in really delicious flavor and eye appeal with not a lot of steps. It's like simple luxury. The takeaway is, it's a short path from raw ingredients to truly, quote-unquote, "restaurant-level dish." That's the takeaway.

TM: Fantastic. My takeaway beyond that, just walking away from the research and the background of this one — being very happy and surprised that, yes, we knew booze was going into the dish, but also the perhaps apocryphal role that cocktails did play in its supposed invention. And that being a Martini, and those being American tourists visiting because of Prohibition — it speaks to me on so many different levels.

ST: The Obituary. Couldn't remember the name of the cocktail. It's The Obituary.

TM: The Obituary. And with that, we shall retire today's show.

ST: That's our Porco last-minute save of the episode.

TM: On two fronts. All right. Well, before anything else goes wrong, I'm gonna put on my apron.

ST: I'm gonna break out the shaker.

TM: And I'm gonna get cooking.

ST: And we're gonna get drinking.

TM: Cheers.

ST: Cheers, buddy.