Porterhouse with a Green Peppercorn Sauce

Having my wish for pizza collectively declined we decided to go for steak and four bits of porterhouse sitting there at closing time at the butchers at Herdies.

A bit of olive oil and pepper chucked into the bag with the steaks and left while I made the sauce.

I think this is the first time I've made a peppercorn sauce and did a bit of guessing, not having the recipe handy. A single shallot very finely chopped and sauteed a little in some olive oil (no butter). A cup or so of beef stock was added and left to boil away until reduced by half, then a tub of (King Island Dairy on special) cream went in too. I also added a splash of lemon juice as I've got some idea in my head that it stops the cream from curdling when boiling. This may be complete rubbish but I'm too lazy to find out otherwise and it seemed to work. The cream was added a spoon at a time and whisked in.

I wasn't sure when the peppercorns went in so I added a teaspoon, and then another later and kept tasting to see how it was going along. I ended up using about half of one of those tiny tins they come in. After about 5 minutes of simmering and whisking every the sauce was ready to go on the BBQ cooked steaks with the slices of eggplant, asparagus and yellow squash also cooked on the barbie.

I don't know how similar it'd be with pedestrian cream but it was fantastic.