Entrecôte with baked tomatoes, fried mushrooms, potato gratin and parsley butter.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2009
It’s during autumn in Sweden that you realize that the epitome ‘Land of the Midnight Sun’ is only valid during the short summers. During the winter, everything turns pretty much into the ‘land of the midday sun glimpse’, if at all, because autumn and winter days are often punctuated with stretches of dark grey, gloom and rain. So there isn’t much else to delight in during these days, except a hearty meal of your favourite cut of steak!
With logs burning in the woodstove and with a flip of a switch to turn on the lights, the kitchen is as warm and as bright as we could wish for. And we went about preparing the meat.
There are numerous recipes to be had over the internet with regards to preparing meat, most with detailed instructions, so here is an outline of our version.
In order of preparation.
1. Cut and put out the meat in room temperature. It cooks better if it hasn’t been previously refrigerated so that it is colder on the inside than the outside. Personally I think meat turns more flavourful if it is salted about 50 minutes before it goes into the pot, more or less.
2. Prepare parsley butter.
Mix butter with chopped parsley.
We store our own parsley form the summer ready to use, in the freezer. Add some lemon juice, some Worchester sauce, salt and white pepper. Mix and refrigerate until serving.
