Fire Extinguisher: Ready. Still Waiting.

 I decided to join the online cooking group "French Fridays With Dorie", in which 2000 people cook the same meal from Around My French Table each week and then post about it on their blogs. It's kind of fun to see that everybody's finished product looks totally different, even though they're all following the same instructions. This is my first week joining the group, and the selected recipe--Bistrot Paul Bert Pepper Steak (pg 238)--is not one that I would have chosen on my own, for two reasons:

1) My husband cooks steak beautifully. I burn it. There's nothing worse than destroying an expensive piece of beef, so I usually cede control to Matt.
2) This recipe involves setting brandy on fire. I am accident prone. (Did I mention that I sliced my thumb open on my mixer blade making yesterday's crackers?) Of the 2000 participants, I'd be the one voted most likely to burn her house down. Still, I figured that if all those other people were willing to risk possessions, pets, and families in pursuit of Dorie devotion, then so was I.

I cooked the filets and tented them in foil. I left the pan to cool for a minute, per the instructions, then poured in the brandy that I had on hand, which was, admittedly, super-cheap. I summoned my courage, lit a match, and...nothing. I spent the next five minutes trying to ignite the sucker. Every now and then a section would ripple under a soft, quickly-extinguished flame. Part of me must have been hoping for a fireball, because I felt really disappointed. It was so anticlimactic. I didn't realize it as it was happening, but I think all the alcohol must have burned out when it hit the hot pan (or, my brandy was so cheap that it had no alcohol. It's possible. Later, Matt tried to set it a slug of it on fire in a cold pan, and it took some work to light.) Anyway, by default, I wound up using the instructions for boiling the brandy.

I don't know why, but I absolutely could not get a decent photo of this.

 The sauce (reduced brandy + heavy cream) was good, but I'm more pleased with the fact that I finally, finally cooked a good steak. Not a great steak, but a good steak. Besides the fact that my pyrotechnic failures caused the meat to sit under the tent for waaaay too long, my filet was thinner than Matt's, so it was more well done than I would have liked. His was cooked perfectly, though. We'd been a bit snippy with each other before dinner. Matt took one bite, smiled, and said "All is forgiven."

Conclusion: Love, for Matt's reaction, for the fact that it would be really hard not to love filet mignon, and for the fact that it was so easy. Ever-so-slightly-overcooking the meat was my fault, not Dorie's. I would try to use better brandy and flame it right next time, and see if that imparts more flavor to the sauce. Really, though, when you weigh the Easy Factor against the outcome, this dish blows it off the charts. There's hardly any prep. If the brandy had flamed as expected, this steak and its sauce would have taken a whopping 7 minutes to cook.