Computer Generated Café de Paris Sauce for Steak

One of my favourites at a local restaurant is steak with Café de Paris butter. Now according to Wikipedia a vast difference exists between Café de Paris butter and Café de Paris sauce. Café de Paris butter is the most wonderfully savoury, deeply satisfying sauce you can possibly have with steak. It does not overpower the taste of the steak, it greatly enhances it. So when I checked on the net, there were too many recipes all claiming to be the authentic Café de Paris sauce (but meaning butter). I downloaded loads of these recipes and put the lists of ingredients into an Excel Spreadsheet. I then ran it all through a Pivot Table, which gave me the amount of times a specific ingredient featured in my collection of recipes. I decided on a arbitrary cut-off point and only used the ingredients featured in a certain percentage of recipes. I read through the original recipes to get a feel for amounts and method of preparation. The result was staggeringly delicious and unspeakably good. It was delightfully first class and just so satisfactorily mouth-wateringly tasty! I have made it many times since and always makes extra to keep in the freezer. So when Lamb and Image visited Grandma last week this was definitely on one evening’s menu for one. I bought a nice juicy piece of rib-eye steak which I sizzled in a griddle pan. It was a large piece of steak and I was not in the mood for starch, so I only had steamed broccoli with a lime-coriander dressing with my Café de Paris steak. Lamb had the camera with her, so the photo below is not my own – got it from the web. When one looks at the list of ingredients, one would think that this cannot possibly taste good. It’ll certainly spoil the taste of the steak, but look at amounts and method and I promise you, you will not be disappointed. Hey it is me, J. Hardspear de la Azotea, will I ever post a recipe which is not good? I ask you?

Here is my computer generated recipe then:

Filet Café de Paris 250 g Butter (Soft) 4 tbsp (in total combined) Fresh Parsley, Tarragon, Thyme, Rosemary, Oregano, Basil, Sage (At least 5 of the above) Try to get as much fresh as possible and use dried only for those you cannot get fresh. The Tarragon and Sage is very important, so use dried if you must. 2 Cloves Garlic 2 Lemons (Juice and Zest) 1 Chopped Shallot or red onion 1 tsp Curry Powder 8 Anchovy Fillets 1 Small glass Madeira/Sherry/Port Season with salt & Pepper Finely chop shallot and sweat till soft in a little oil. Add Madeira/Sherry/Port and cook till evaporated. Add anchovies and stir till dissolved into the mixture and add the curry powder. Remove from the heat and let cool. Chop the fresh herbs as finely as possible. Mince the garlic, grate some zest off of the lemons and squeeze the juice out. Thoroughly mix everything with the soft butter. Can be prepared well in advance and kept in refrigerator or freezer. Coat whole fillet with olive oil and season with salt & pepper. Cook on Weber using indirect method – hot fire for 35-40 min. Put Café de Paris butter in a cast iron saucepan and pan on the grill. Whilst on the grill, cut into steaks and flash each piece directly over the hot coals and then into the Café de Paris butter. Serve straight away. Works also for steaks grilled directly over coals or steak fried in a griddle pan on the stove.