Jeremiah & Fabian's Picanha Wildair

RECIPE BY

Jeremiah Stone and Fábian von Hauske

Jeremiah Stone and Fábian von Hauske Valtierra own New York restaurants Contra and Wildair. “Fabian is Mexican, I am Chinese and we are also very influenced by Korean and Japanese cuisine,” says Jeremiah. “There's a lot of overlap with those food cultures and being in New York, there are so many cultures to latch onto so we can go down all these different roads. “Jeremiah does the wine, I am more into doing the visual elements,” says Fábian. “I do the pastry, he does the savoury. Sometimes we have different approaches - I think that’s been really important for us, that’s how we've been able to stay together for this long. We're able to take a lot of the ego out and work as a team.”

We play with steak au poivre at Wildair and this is a version of that. Instead of using cream to flavour and thicken the sauce, we emulsify brown butter and egg to create a thick sauce. It’s creamy but it also has a huge punch of different peppercorns, each of them playing different parts: numbing, tingling, heat. It really dials into a nice, creamy, peppery sauce but it reads differently: coating the tongue and not being too overpowering and filling.

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Steak

1 250g – 300g (8.8-10.6 oz) Westholme picanha
1 head black garlic

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Wildair

300g (10.6 oz) butter
1 tbsp green peppercorns in brine
5g black peppercorns
5g Sichuan peppercorns
2 egg yolks
20ml (2/3 oz) shirodashi
Splash white wine vinegar
Kosher salt
30ml (1 oz) cognac, cooked off

Picanha Wildair

Cook butter until slightly nutty and browning.
Let it cool to about 64C / 147F and drizzle into two egg yolks in a blender.
Throw in green peppercorns and grind in black and Sichuan peppercorns.
Blend, seasoning with shirodashi and vinegar and a splash of water if it’s too thick. Add salt to taste and cognac.
Slow-cook steak in the oven at 52C / 125F on a rack for 40 minutes.
Sear in a hot pan and brush with black garlic.
Let rest for 10 minutes, slice thinly and serve with pepper sauce.