Whenever I have steak in a restaurant, I always opt for a lovely Diane sauce but it’s not something I’ve ever tried at home before. This week, after purchasing a couple of rump steaks, I decided to give it a go. At first I thought some major adaptation would be required to make it Weight Watchers friendly but once I started to look into it I realised that in actual fact, the sauce itself isn’t too points heavy. The recipe I decided to adapt was an Anthony Worral Thompson recipe that I found on the BBC Food website and the only adaptation required was leaving out the butter and swapping double for single cream. The sauce was lovely and ideal paired with the steak and hassleback sweet potatoes!! You could also serve this with wild rice if you fancy making the whole dish a bit quicker. Using a 40g dried portion per person would keep the points for the meal to 13pp.
Ingredients
Serves 2 = 13sp (previously 13pp) each
2 x medium sized sweet potatoes (150g each)
1 x pack of button mushrooms, halved
Pack of green beans, trimmed
2 x 200g rump steak (or sirloin if you want to be fancy)
For the sauce – (4sp per person on it’s own)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 shallots (or one onion) very finely diced
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp red wine
3 tbsp beef stock
1 tbsp brandy
4 tbsp single cream
Splash of water
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Method
Preheat your oven to 180c. Poke the sweet potatoes with a knife and pop in the microwave for 4 minutes. Remove from the microwave. Slice the potatoes around half way through at 1cm intervals. Pop into a baking tray, spray with 1kal and season well with salt and pepper (you can pop some fresh rosemary in too if you have it). Pop in the oven uncovered for 45 minutes.
Whilst the potatoes are cooking you can get on with the rest of the dish.
Season the steaks with salt and black pepper, then place into a hot frying pan spray with one kal. Fry until cooked to your liking (we like it medium rare so I cook for around 2/3 minutes on each side). Remove the steaks from the pan and put to one side to rest.
Pop the green beans into some lightly salted boiling water and cook to your liking (I boil for 8-10 minutes and they still have a little crunch).
Meanwhile, pop your mushrooms in a large frying, spray with 1kal and season. Fry for around five minutes until nice and soft. Remove mushrooms from the pan and pop into a bowl to one side. In the same frying pan, add the shallots and fry on a gentle heat in 1kal for 8-10 minutes until nice and soft. Then add the Dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce to the pan and stir well. Then add the red wine and stock and bring to the boil. Boil until reduced by one-third.
Next add the brandy and very carefully set light to it to burn off the alcohol (I used a long candle lighter so I didn’t have to put my hands near it!). Allow the flames to subside (this will be very quick), then add the cream and simmer over a high heat for about three minutes. Add a splash of water to loosen the mixture, add the mushrooms back into the frying pan, fold in the parsley, season to your taste, reduce the heat to low and keep the sauce warm until everything else is ready. Add a little more water at any point if you fancy the sauce more loose (the temperature needs to be really low so the sauce doesn’t reduce away).
When everything is ready to go, pop the steaks (and the lovely juices that have run off them) into the frying pan and warm through (don’t boil) covering in the sauce.
Place the steaks on a warmed plate, top with the sauce and serve with the potato and green beans.
Enjoy!
