Mark Steuer, chef of the yet-to-open restaurant the Bedford, challenged Stephanie Izard of Girl & the Goat to come up with a recipe using confectioners’ sugar for this installment of our weekly feature.
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She’d been craving red meat, so she picked up “a couple of big-ass steaks” at the butcher across the street and made a rub for them using confectioners’ sugar and spices. Also known as powdered sugar, confectioners’ sugar is finely ground granulated sugar, usually mixed with a small amount of cornstarch to prevent clumping. It can act differently from regular sugar when heated, as Izard discovered when she tried to make a gastrique for the steak with it. “When you reduce down regular sugar or maple syrup it just caramelizes and makes a syrupy, glisteny sort of gastrique-type thing happening, which didn’t seem to happen with the confectioners’ sugar—I don’t know why. It just kind of melted in there and made it a little bit sweet,” she said. She solved the problem by adding veal stock to turn it into a sauce instead.
Along with confectioners’ sugar, Izard tossed the almonds with cayenne pepper, tomato powder, rosemary, and malt vinegar powder to make them savory and spicy as well as sweet. “Tomato powder’s just cool; it adds that bright tomato flavor,” she said. Tomato and rosemary also show up in the sauce, and malt vinegar in both the sauce and the rub—”see, it all comes together full circle. Very exciting.”
Randy Zweiban of Province, cooking with tamarind. “I love it,” Izard said of the ingredient. “It’s tangy, with a sort of unique sweet thing going on with it. But I don’t think it’s something people use at home much.”
¼ cup kosher salt
3 Roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
