The Main Event
Setting the scene:
Fillet Steak with Shallot, Port & Marrow Butter.
Think outside the box and serve this dish on a rustic wooden board to share between you. Decant the wine into a special jug and put a photograph of you both in a cheeky frame on the table with a kiss of lipstick on the glass.
Use your favourite duvet as a table cloth to tease and to suggest snuggling up underneath it later.
For 2 lovers
Get on with it…
Fillet Steak with Shallot, Port & Marrow Butter.
An important start is to prepare the wine. Red, deep and textured is called for; choose a barrel aged Rioja Crianza ideally about 3-4 years old.
Pull the cork and let it breath for at least an hour at room temperature.
Into a small saucepan put 50g chopped shallots, 1 clove garlic, crushed, 75ml port, 100ml red wine plus a glass for the chef, 10g sugar & 25ml balsamic vinegar.
Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, reduce until thick, sticky & deliciously unctuous & then leave to cool.
Put 125g unsalted butter into a bowl & add 50g beef marrow, the leaves from 2 sprigs of thyme & 1 tbsp chopped parsley. Mix together well & bring up to room temperature.
Now blend the shallot with the butter, roll up in clingfilm to make a fat sausage & chill. So now you can cool it, warm things up or just chill.
When you’re ready again pan fry 2 x 6oz fillet steaks to your liking & while they rest after cooking put a thick round of the divine butter on top to melt & ooze all over the hunk of meat.
Serve with a watercress salad & matchstick chips.
Ingredients available from www.waitrose.com.
Feed the desire…
Fillet Steak with Shallot, Port & Marrow Butter. Considered a luxury ingredient and one of humanities super foods with suggestions of affluence marrow bone is seductive in its own right.
This highly nutritious substance appears regularly in aphrodisiac recipes from most times and cultures. The poet Horace records that its use as an erotic stimulant was widespread in Rome during his time.
