On Wednesday I had such a stressful day I felt like my head was going to explode.  I work in a film archive (well no longer physically “in” it) and stress is usually absent from my working life. But sometimes I have a humdinger of a day and I end up as Rhona Cameron once put it, like a TIGHTLY-COILED-SPRING.

In the evening I forced myself to walk away from the computer into the calm of the kitchen and cook myself something soothing.  I had a huge sirloin steak to hand and no real plan for it, but I knew there were quite a few steak recipes in my beloved Treasury…

My original copy is way more bashed around than this one.  This photo is from an eBay listing and I was tickled by the listing which has this line in it, “First and utmost Mister Bone is not included in the sale; he is my product model and seems to love his job.”  Haha!  If I didn’t already have two copies of the Treasury I’d be tempted by this one as there is a mention of “several sketches and hand written quotes and notes” in the book.  About the recipes?  Ooh, catnip!

As I had a scroll through Vincent’s weighty tome, my spring slowly began to uncoil. I saw a couple of steak recipes I’ve tried before.  I love Vincent’s Steak au Poivre and the Butterfly Steak Hong Kong too.  I really wanted to have a go at his Steak Diane, but during this unusual time of plague, something untoward has happened, there is currently no Worcestershire Sauce in the cupboard.

But I had everything I needed for the Mustard Steak (if you saw how much mustard there is in my flat you would consider this an understatement)

so I set to it.  I’m at now at the stage in this “go nowhere, see no-one, create mountains of washing-up every day even though you are just cooking for one person” situation where I CANNOT BE BOTHERED to cook on a daily basis.  But if I can trick myself into doing it, it always does make me feel better.  This steak certainly did, even though I almost set my kitchen on fire…

That photo was snapped after the entire pan was aflame just like Debbie Harry’s!  Basically, I forgot to pour off the butter before chucking over the cognac.  Once I got over the shock and scoffed it, It was DELICIOUS!  The photo doesn’t do it justice.

The following doctored photo of Vincent seems 100% appropriate to illustrate this recipe and has taken me down a lovely research rabbit hole.

It appears on a wonderful recipe write up for Vincent’s Steak Diane recipe that you can find here. Further ferreting around took me to the author’s amazing website – Eat The Dead.  I could spend hours and hours and hours looking at the amazing creations on this website so I heartily recommend all horror film fans and fans of creativity in cooking skip over there STAT!  Those who know about my minor obsession with lamb cake will totally understand why this picture gave me conniptions.  I was wiping tears from my eyeballs I was laughing so much when I spotted this.

I am SO making a Black Phillip Lamb Cake this Easter, even if there will be no guests to help me eat it all.

It might be a bit quiet around these parts for a while as I’m going to have my head down working on the Vincent Price book. Most of the recipes have been assigned to test cooks but if you want to be part of the action, do get in touch via the Contact Page as there are a couple of weird ones that need an eye casting over…

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