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| Madeira-Mushroom Steak |
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| Madeira Wine, Portuguese Wine. Rainwater version and fine rich version. Both great for culinary tasting |
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| Full image of the plate |
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| Madeira-mushroom sauce was used for steak and mashed potatoes sauce. PERFECT! |
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| The taste testers for my new recipe. Phaly, Lett, E Don and James |
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| Dinner followed with wine and "spirits". As always... |
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| Lett sampling her plate. |
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| Bring on the drinks.... |
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| The Stellas were great as a dessert...we were so full. |
Madeira wine is Portuguese wine that is great to use for seasoning steaks, chicken, veal and pork. I came across this during a brunch with a couple of girlfriends. My girlfriend Kham ordered a chicken Madeira and I instantly fell in love with the Madeira-mushroom sauce. My culinary instinct of course became curious on how to master this recipe only to stimulate my own version of it.
Naturally, I did a little research and to share a brief history used from Wikipedia:
"Madeira have a long winemaking history dating back to the Age of Exploration when Madeira was a standard port of call for ships heading to the New World or East Indies. To prevent the wine from spoiling, neutral grape spirits were added. On the long sea voyages, the wines would be exposed to excessive heat and movement which transformed the flavour of the wine as the wine producers of Madeira found out when an unsold shipment of wine returned to the islands after a round trip. Today, Madeira is noted for its unique winemaking process which involves heating the wine up to temperatures as high as 60 °C (140 °F) for an extended period of time and deliberately exposing the wine to some levels of oxidation. Because of this unique process, Madeira is a very robust wine that can be quite long lived even after being opened." I can understand why this wine is so special for its culinary contribution.
Instantly after learning this I had to go out and buy the wine and incorporate it in my dinner. Since I love to cook for others, I invited some friends to be my test-tasters, Lett, Phaly and Don. I wanted to see if they would like the sauce since they all have great taste in food and they would be my greatest critics.
The entrée consists of the Madeira-mushroom sauce over sirloin steaks. Side dish was homemade red mashed potatoes with melted-mozzarella cheese and topped with the Madeira-mushroom as gravy topped off with buttered asparagus.
For my Madeira-mushroom sauce, I used olive oil to grill the mushroom, added butter, salt and pepper, the Madeira rich wine (not rainwater version), cornstarch, fresh thymes and mushroom extract seasoning. Try it; you can’t go wrong with that sauce on any type of meat or as a gravy topper.
As my friends finished their plate, I couldn’t be happier to hear their evaluations. As a culinary-fanatic for as long as I have been, I usually look forward to any critique because I love to hear what I can do better and it just forces me to challenge myself. But simply from what they said, there was nothing that needed to be improved and I usually am my own worst critic, and this mini-dinner party I am content to say I can pat myself on the back and actually mean it. =)
Live, Laugh and Love. Dinners with friends and great conversation is what it’s about… “Bon Appétit et Avoir plus dîners avec les amis, c’est bonne chose, n’est-ce pas?”
