Steak Diane with Asparagus

Wednesday May 20

We had steaks; we had asparagus. Holt had some vague plan of doing a béarnaise sauce and thought that the result was called steak diane. When we went to look it up in New Joy, we found out it had nothing to do with either asparagus or béarnaise, but we decided to do it anyway . . . but with asparagus. We had forgotten about this way of preparing thin steaks. Its origins are much disputed - anywhere from Escoffier to NYC in the 60s, but rather clearly meant, I think, to be done table side by waiters covered in flaming booze.

None of the recipes seem to have anything in common except the steak and the flames - but that's okay, those are what we had.
Joy’s recipe is basically:
After pan frying the steaks, remove and let rest while you make the sauce.
In the oil and fat, sauté a shallot. Add some brandy, flambé just for the heck of it. Then the fun part is: add 1/4 cup beef stock (we used the last of our veal cubes), some more brandy, and the secret ingredient:
1 TBL dijon mustard

plus 2 tsp lemon juice and
1 tsp worcestershire sauce

Boil the sauce down a bit, scraping up the traditional brown bits and steaky goodness into the sauce.
Pour sauce over steaks and garnish lovingly with parsley.
Asparagus, not mushrooms (or black beans, which is what Epicurious used, for god's sake!) on the side. Plus little yukon golds, dolloped with the last of the sour cream, and bestrewn with chives. What are you going to be, a purist or a foodist?