Green Peppercorn Sauce

I stumbled across this recipe on green peppercorn sauce (with meatballs) while researching for a sauce to try with our steaks tonight. Green peppercorn sauce with steak is a classic combo. But somehow I had never actually tried it at home... We've always seemed to have gone with either the chimichurri, bernaise or mushroom sauce.

The recipe below does look like it calls for a lot of different ingredients. But I found that except for the sherry wine vinegar, I had pretty much everything already. A quick google search returned some suggestions for sherry wine vinegar substitutions. These were sweeten rice wine or red wine vinegar or white wine vinegar, with the preferred being the rice wine. I had some mirin (japanese sweet rice wine) available in my pantry, so I went for the rice wine option.

The sauce turned out great... the spice and tanginess of the peppercorn and mustard help balance what would have been a quite rich and creamy sauce. I definitely would be making this one again.. :)

Green Peppercorn Sauce
adapted from this recipe from Simply Recipes

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 medium shallots
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons sherry wine vinegar (I substituted with Mirin - sweet rice wine)
• ½ cup Cognac
• ½ cup red wine
• 1 cup of beef stock (I used a beef stock cube dissolved in 1 cup of hot water)
• ½ cup heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons green peppercorns
• Salt to taste
  

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the shallots and cook until golden brown, about 4 minutes.
2. Add the mustard and sherry vinegar (in my case.. the mirin) and reduce to half, about 1 minute. Add the cognac and cook to burn off the alcohol, about 3 minutes.
3. Add the red wine and reduce by half, about 10 minutes.
4. Add the stock and reduce the mixture by half again, about 10 minutes.
5. Remove from the heat and whisk in the cream, butter and crushed green peppercorns.
6. Add salt to taste.

We had the sauce with steak and mash potatoes. :)