Steak with Mustard Sauce, Spinach in Cream Sauce and Parisian Cucumbers

I managed to make it through a harrowing Monday.  It was so Monday-like that I almost thought I would need to buy take out, eat pizza or worse drive through a slop vendor and eat slop.  Thankfully my fiance is the best, and agreed to go grocery shopping with me to fight the fast food demons.

I decided to do a fast cooking Silver Spoon trio to mediate the kinda long session of grocery shopping.  Steak, creamed spinach and a cucumber salad, how long could it take? Turns out it takes about an hour, but who's counting?!

I first washed and cooked the spinach "in only the water that clings to it," after the rinsing.  Something about that line feels fancy even if all I am doing is cooking spinach.  After cooking the spinach, I drained and cooked the spinach with butter for ten more unnecessary minutes. I have to say, I protest the long cooking times for vegetables a la The Silver Spoon, please excuse my bias.  While the spinach was dissolving into nothing, I chopped three cucumbers for my Parisian Cucumbers, salted them and let them sit for thirty minutes.   Oh boy SS, this meal was supposed to be quick.  In the meantime I chopped up parsley and garlic to add to the cucumbers once they had drained.

After adding cream to the spinach and egads, cooking it for twenty more minutes, it was time to cook the steaks.  Steak with mustard sauce is a truly quick recipe.  I simply sauteed the steak for two minutes on each side and put it aside.  Then I added a bit of brandy to the pan, this is another thing my dad does!  He loves to deglaze the pan and it always infuses his dishes with rich flavor.  After sufficiently deglazing, I added cream and mustard and let thicken.  I put the steaks back in to the sauce and combined the extraneous ingredients for my "Parisian Cucumbers."  All that was left was to make a easy dressing of mustard, lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper and dump it on the cucumbers.

Dinner was creamy!  Creamy spinach topped with a little table side parmesan, with a creamy, mustardy steak actuallymight have been a little too much of a good thing.  The "Parisian Cucumbers" helped to cut the cream with their refreshing light taste.   I feel like a drank a pint of cream, I might as well after such a decadent meal.  However, let the record show that this meal was low carb and despite my foible at a certain French restaurant this weekend, I am back on the straight and cream filled narrow.  Tomorrow, I am making ribs in wine sauce, I think there is cream in that recipe too, yikes!