Anthony Bourdain Special (1/4): Steak Frites, the Classic Brasserie Dish

 

This post opens a special dedicated to Anthony Bourdain, with four recipes that follow his philosophy: few ingredients, done well. We start with steak frites, a classic that has a lot to do with him.

Anthony Bourdain (New York, 1956-2018) was a chef, writer and TV host. With Kitchen Confidential (2000) he showed, with no filter, what a professional kitchen is really like, and with shows such as No Reservations and Parts Unknown he traveled the world defending honest food, from a classic restaurant to a street stall.

Two reasons. International Chefs Day was celebrated a few days ago (October 20), and on October 26 Tony, the A24 film about his youth, arrives on Prime Video. The film follows a 19-year-old Bourdain who takes a summer job at a Cape Cod restaurant in 1975, guided by a mentor played by Antonio Banderas. It is not a full biography, but the summer he discovered cooking.

Because it is the dish of Les Halles, the New York brasserie where Bourdain worked as a chef. His book Les Halles Cookbook teaches classic French bistro recipes such as steak frites. It is cooking with no frills: a good steak, twice-fried potatoes and a very hot pan.

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 2 sirloin or ribeye steaks, 250-300 g each, taken out of the fridge 30 minutes beforehand
• 600 g potatoes (Agria or Monalisa)
• Oil for frying
• Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 30 g butter, 3 sprigs of thyme, 2 garlic cloves
• Dijon mustard and chopped parsley

Instructions

1. Cut the potatoes into sticks and soak them in cold water for 30 minutes. Drain and dry them well.
2. First fry in oil over medium heat for 6-8 minutes, until cooked through but still pale. Drain.

3. Season the steak with coarse salt and pepper right before cooking.

4. Sear in a cast-iron pan over high heat, very hot, 2-3 minutes per side. At the end, add the butter, thyme and garlic, and baste the steak.

5. Rest the steak for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, fry the potatoes a second time in very hot oil for 2-3 minutes, until golden. Salt them as soon as they come out.

6. Slice the steak and serve with the fries, parsley and a spoonful of Dijon mustard.

Next in the special (2/4), Cacio e pepe pasta

"I know what good food is. I've spent decades of my life perfecting classic French techniques, emulsifying sauces, and chopping shallots until my fingers bled. But my palate has no morals. I can appreciate the genius of a cutting-edge avant-garde chef and, a couple of hours later, feel an almost erotic desire for a slice of cold pizza from the night before or a processed cheese sandwich from a gas station. If you only eat in gastronomic temples, you become a boring snob; if you only eat garbage, you destroy yourself. The secret to a good life is to be an absolute gastronomic promiscuous."

— Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook.