Steak with Red Wine Sauce

1. Where do the best steaks come from?
2. How to sauté steaks
3. How to make pan-deglazed red wine sauces and other brown sauces
4. How to make béarnaise, flavored butters, and mayonnaise
5. How to work with marrow

Virtually every restaurant in France has a steak on the menu, sometimes because steaks happen to be the specialty of the house, but more often to accommodate diners who feel like having something simple and, as the French would say, sans chichi. The steak you’ll get depends on the kind of place you’re in. In an inexpensive corner restaurant, maybe one that specializes in steak frites (a steak served with French fries), you’re likely to get a thin slice of bifteck taken from one of the many muscles that make up the steer’s leg—a little on the tough side, but often a good value for a quick bite. Steaks served with a shallot and white wine sauce are almost ubiquitous on the menus of modest bistros. Onglet aux échalotes or bavette aux échalotes are the most common because both of these steaks are tasty and relatively inexpensive. The onglet, called hangar steak in English, is a long, irregular strip of meat that hangs inside the steer’s rib cage. It’s now catching on in the United States, so what used to be a bargain steak (albeit hard to find) is now getting pricey in the same way as the once inexpensive bavette, which we call flank steak. In more expensive (or pretentious) places, you’re likely to encounter an entrecote, served with any number of sauces and garnitures, which will vary according to where you are. In the fanciest restaurants in France, you may see entrecôte du Charollais or entrecôte charollaise. These are steaks taken from France’s most famous steers, the Charollais, which are giant white steers that are allowed to live for six years instead of the usual five (or even four) so that they develop more flavor. Strictly speaking, an entrecôte is a boneless rib steak (versus a côte de boeuf, which is a giant rib steak, with the bone, usually served for 2); but nowadays, in good places at least, an entrecôte is often a contre-filet (what in New York is called a strip steak), and in cheap places, a bifsteck or romsteck, another inexpensive cut.