yummy

needs more bacon salt

thats extreme

Stinky, some protips for ya courtesy of my wife (trained & qualified chef):

Nice to see a man in the kitchen having fun! Some ideas (take em or leave em).

The Roux
A roux is not a gravy - during preparation it should be textured more like breadcrumbs than a liquid. Use butter instead of oil and you can add milk for a bechemel, but you are probably really after a sauce not a true roux.

Instead for a nice steak sauce / gravy try using a stock made from bones & vegetables, seasoned with bay leaves, peppercorns, crushed garlic & thyme simmered down to make a jus li'e (thickened gravy).

Meat Juices
A few times in the recipe you make use of the meat juices - in particular at the end draining and re-adding the run-off from resting the rare steak back to the gravy. While this may sound like a good idea for a carnivore it will only detract from the taste of your sauce - rare steaks are rested for a reason.

You should discard marinade leftover, the purpose of the marinade is to infuse the meat with flavour, not to produce a sauce base. If you need a stronger bourbon flavour with your meal you can pour one!

Flambe
While it looks flashy, the purpose of flambe is to take the alcohol content out of the bourbon leaving the flavour intact, not to show off.

Hogfather, when's wifey posting her guide? =)

I've been hassling her to put her skills to work actually! I reckon there's a good cook book to be had. She's retired from pro cheffing now but has a whole suitcase full of awesome recipes from working in Europe and AU.

My old boss asked her for a good steak dianne recipe and she actually got a bit offended - its apparently like asking a magician for their secrets.

A QGL recipe & photo shoot might be a good test bed :)

Yeah mate, hit her up for it! I like reading Stinky's threads, he seems pretty creative, but it'd be pretty awesome to see what a professional chef could throw together for us forum tards. I really enjoy cooking too, I just need to get a little more out there and try things a little more creative.

hoggy, some photos of your missus in action would be a good start

and then some photos of her cooking

hogfather, im sure youve seen this on qgl so here it goes...

pics or lying :D

Thanks for the pro-tips mrs hogfather.

The Roux
A roux is not a gravy - during preparation it should be textured more like breadcrumbs than a liquid. Use butter instead of oil and you can add milk for a bechemel, but you are probably really after a sauce not a true roux.

Yeah I know there's a difference, but the resulting sauce was more like a gravy than a sauce, so that's what I called it. I use olive oil instead of butter to convince myself it's slightly healthier. My understanding of a roux is that you make it 1 part flour, 1 part fat. Interesting that you say it should be more like breadcrumbs in consistency.

Instead for a nice steak sauce / gravy try using a stock made from bones & vegetables, seasoned with bay leaves, peppercorns, crushed garlic & thyme simmered down to make a jus li'e (thickened gravy).

That's not far off what I usually do, but I generally base it off a red wine reduction rather than stock.

Meat Juices
A few times in the recipe you make use of the meat juices - in particular at the end draining and re-adding the run-off from resting the rare steak back to the gravy. While this may sound like a good idea for a carnivore it will only detract from the taste of your sauce - rare steaks are rested for a reason.

You should discard marinade leftover, the purpose of the marinade is to infuse the meat with flavour, not to produce a sauce base. If you need a stronger bourbon flavour with your meal you can pour one!

That's interesting. I'd just assumed that the juices from a cooked steak would give the sauce a meatier flavour. Same with the left over marinade. Good to know!

Flambe
While it looks flashy, the purpose of flambe is to take the alcohol content out of the bourbon leaving the flavour intact, not to show off.

Yeah I know, but whenever you watch a chef's show almost every time they throw anything into a pan it flames up ( probably not a real flambe, I think it's caused by the really hot oil in the pan atomizing and becoming very ignitable ). That doesn't seem to happen in real life, so generally put it down to the chef's showing off for the camera.

My old boss asked her for a good steak dianne recipe and she actually got a bit offended - its apparently like asking a magician for their secrets.

can second that.

One of my ex's was a chef (crazy bitch qualified as a pastry chef and then went and did it all over again as a normal chef...) an yeah, recipes to them are more important than national secrets.

While it's simmering make a basic roux by cooking 2 Tb of flour and 2 Tb of olive oil.

I must be the only geek here that read "2 Terabytes" when I saw "2 Tb".....

*sighs* I'm such a nerd....

ahah you failure moo