Elegant Beef Diane in a Rich Cognac Sauce

This is the winner, my friends. So dang good, you will absolutely love this recipe. Diane, stemming from the word Diana, is the Roman goddess for the hunt. Now, we don't know the exact history of the Steak Diane recipe, but we do know it became popularized in the mid-1900s. It's so easy, steak with a delicious cream sauce. I'm telling you right now, this is the one. What we need to do, though, is knock out a little prep because this one moves super fast. And if you don't have the prep ready, you are gonna be cursing my name out because it's gonna be really hard to cook. Sound good with that prep? Let's cook. We're gonna kick off this recipe in classic Chef Billy Percy form by cutting up an onion, and in this case, a shallot. So what we're gonna do is slice off the end, slice it in half, remove that tough outside peeling. Remember to save those peelings. They're good for stock. And then what I'm gonna do is small dice it. Now, the substitute for a shallot in this classic Steak Diane recipe are green onions. So if you wanna use those instead, totally fine. And then you know me, after 25 years of dicing garlic, I'm gonna run it through my garlic press. Nothing like it, my friends. Go ahead and press all of those garlic cloves through there. Use your knife just to get all of the goodness off there. We're gonna set that bowl to the side. And next, I've got some mushrooms. Now, this wouldn't be classically in the original Steak Diane recipes, but it's been an addition in the last 30 or 40 years, and it is so good. I've got a combination of cremini and domestic butt mushrooms. What we're gonna do is just take a damp towel and wipe off any excess dirt or anything unwanted that are on the mushroom caps and stems. Now, you could absolutely sub out for maitake, shiitake, oyster. You can get creative here. These would be used in a more updated recipe. So to slice them, I slice off the end like this. I roll it. This allows the mushroom to stabilize so it doesn't roll around when I'm trying to slice it. Just a great way to practice this technique. It keeps your fingers safe and it stops that mushroom from rolling. So again, slice it, roll it over, and then thinly slice it again until all the mushrooms are completely sliced. This looks great. We're gonna take them and just set them to the side in a bowl. Now, I've got some Italian flat-leaf parsley. I'm just going to roll it up. I always do this, and you can see that there are stems on there. Like I say all the time when cutting herbs, there is so much flavor in the stems of fresh herbs. Just taste it. It's delicious. So we're gonna finely mince this just as best as we can. This looks perfect. What we wanna do at this point is just take this parsley and set it to the side. We're now going to thinly slice up some chives. Now, I can't say this enough. This recipe requires all the prep to be completely finished. So if you need to slice up a little bit of butter, measure out everything, please do it. This is just a garnish using chives, but I wanna make sure it's done so that the cooking process is seamless. Now, what I'm going to do is pull out our beef tenderloin. This would absolutely be classical to use in a steak dining recipe, but you could substitute out for a sirloin or perhaps a ribeye. What I'm gonna do is take the beef tenderloin off the plate. We wanna slice it into about four to five ounce slices. So starting from the one end, just make sure you've got a really sharp knife and do it as best as you can. Just use the eye test. You don't have to measure it out. It doesn't have to be so prescriptive and precise. We're just simply trying to make pieces that are perfect for serving up. Once they are sliced, because filet mignon is so tender, just use your hand and press it down a little bit. This is just gonna flatten it out, tenderize it slightly, but not gonna do anything big. Just gonna sort of increase that surface area. If you're using sirloin or ribeye, you may need to pound it out using a rubber mallet. We are gonna set it to the side on a plate. Now spread all those filets out. We're gonna season it very well on both sides. Remember that with sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Be about a foot off from what you're seasoning so you can cover every little square centimeter with those seasonings. We are going over to our cooktop. Got a very large saute pan. I'm gonna add in some safflower oil. You could absolutely use grapeseed oil, canola oil, or olive oil. We wanna crank that heat on high. We want the smoke to roll this time, not lightly smoke. We want it to roll because we have to quickly, quickly cook these and set them to side. We do not want them to overcook. So go ahead and add in your filet mignons. And if you have to do it in batches because your pan is not big enough, no problem. We are talking maybe two minutes on the first side. And you know my little technique, move the filets around, the steak around when they're cooking to help brown them up. This looks absolutely perfect. You're not gonna get a perfect brown on all of them because it cooks so quickly, but do the best job that you can. This is excellent. Two minutes on one side, one minute on the other. That is it. It's gonna be a nice rare to medium rare. We're gonna set it to the side on a plate, let it rest, because in the meantime, we need to make our sauce. So while that big saute pan is still over high heat, we're gonna add in our sliced butt mushrooms. Remember, we've got the rendered meat fat in there, still some of the oil that we cooked in, so it's absolutely the perfect amount. Take the time to saute these. When you caramelize mushrooms, they take on a completely different flavor and they're so dang delicious. So after about six to eight minutes on high heat, you'll notice they get this nice brown. It's amazing. Now we are just gonna scrape and push everything to the top side of the pan. Push all those mushrooms up. Here's a little technique I know I've showed you before, but it is fail-proof. We are now going to add in some unsalted butter right to the bottom. Now, don't forget, let's go ahead and grab our finely minced garlic and add it in there, followed up with adding in your shallots. We are gonna sort of quickly cook, lightly brown the garlic and shallots in the butter on the one side of the pan. Instead of doing this at the beginning and risking burning everything, we do it separate, we caramelize the mushrooms. This is the best way to get as much flavor out of these mushrooms and sauce as possible. I promise this way's awesome. Go ahead and mix everything together, maybe after one to two minutes of cooking the garlic and shallots in the butter. And now we need to flambe. So to do that, remove the pan completely from the burner. We're gonna add in some cognac or brandy. Go ahead and pour it in the pan and immediately return it right to the cooktop. What we wanna do is sort of tilt the pan a little bit so that it catches fire just like this. Don't worry, it's not gonna shoot any crazy flame out there, but please do be careful. If you do get a little nervous, just remove the pan from the burner and blow on it. Usually the flames will go completely out. Once all of the alcohol is cooked off, maybe after 20 to 30 seconds, we are gonna add in some beef stock. Remember, I just made a homemade beef stock recipe, so I'll pull some of that out because it's perfect to use in this dish. We are gonna cook it down on medium to high heat for about three to four minutes. We wanna reduce the amount of liquid by about 1 1⁄2. Now this recipe has a lot of finishers in there, starting with some heavy whipping cream, some nice fat to this sauce. Now what I'm gonna do is add in some Worcestershire sauce for some nice salty goodness, followed up with a little bit of Dijon mustard. And then the next thing that we wanna add in there is our finely minced parsley. Gonna add some flavor and obviously some great green colors to this. And then I'm going to squeeze in just a little bit of lemon juice, maybe a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half, that's it. Now grab a spoon, a wooden spoon or metal, it doesn't matter, even a rubber spatula, and gently fold everything together. You wanna be delicate with sauces. There's no need to move everything around with tongs or scrape anything off the bottom of the pan. Be gentle and delicate when mixing everything. That's all about the love, my friends, you know that. Now what we're gonna do is add those cooked steaks back in there. Remember, they're rare to medium rare, but they have cooled off because we've made our sauce and it's taken about 20 minutes or so. We wanna reheat them, maybe 90 seconds. Just put them back in the sauce over medium heat. Get them nice and toasted up, nice and warm for you to eat. Remove it from the burner. We're gonna set it to the side on our countertop and I cannot wait to get into this. I'm telling you, if you take the time to caramelize those mushrooms, they will take on a completely different flavor and will be so much better. Take your recipe to top flight, my friends, to a whole other level. And of course, the seasoning. You notice I didn't put salt and pepper in the sauce. The Worcestershire sauce and the little bit of Dijon mustard, add some salt, add the little spice. It's perfect, so amazing. Of course, feel free to adjust the seasonings with salt and pepper. And to my commis, my chefs in training out there, I tell you all the time, it's all about understanding these fundamental techniques and putting them into practice into everything you make. It doesn't matter if you're chopping herbs, searing a steak, or finishing a delicious pan sauce. You need to practice them because all of your homemade food from scratch will always taste better. I can't tell you enough. But now we're going to plate up in slow-mo. So I've got a small platter. You could absolutely use a plate. I'm sort of just going to stagger the cooked filets over each other, just like this, to sort of display everything. Now, grabbing a large spoon, spoon your sauce on. Don't just tilt the pan over and dump the sauce all over it. Spoon it on. It makes a difference. It's all about plating and making sure that it looks fantastic before you eat it. Now, in very classical tradition, we are going to garnish with those fresh chopped chives. Looks amazing, smells amazing, and my, oh, my, check out this beauty. There's a reason they call them the classics. They never go away and they're always delicious. That's why people keep making them. You definitely have to make this. 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