Steak with Wild Mushroom Butter and a Beaujolais

I continued cooking my way through Barbara Lynch's Stir last weekend, this time making her Wild Mushroom Butter to top our New York strip steak. I also made the lightly-creamed Spinach Amandine to serve on the side.

Oh man, this wild mushroom butter alone is worth the price of the cookbook (even if I'd bought it rather than getting it as a gift!). I've found herb butters to be a handy flavor boost, but ones I've made have usually just had a bit of garlic and an herb. For the mushroom butter, you saute some finely diced wild mushrooms (I used shiitake) with a shallot and clove of garlic, then combine the mushroom mixture with some butter, parsley, thyme and lemon juice. The result was a terrific, fresh and earthy taste topping our hearty steak. It also was nice on our baked potatoes.

I'd figured any full-bodied red would do for a pairing, but that something with an earthy element to it. I knew I had at least one bottle left from the assortment of "earthy French reds" I'd asked someone at the wine shop to recommend. This included a few bottles from regions I wasn't too familiar with. In my naivete, I thought the Brouilly was going to be a Cab Franc. Stop snickering, you champions of Beaujolais.

So I opened the 2007 Chateau de la Chaize Brouilly under false pretenses. I inhaled the woodsy bouquet and tasted the well-balanced, cherry fruitiness. It was lighter than what I was anticipating, and I began to suspect that I'd been mistaken about what I'd selected. A quick check of The Oxford Companion to Wine quickly set me straight, and now I know the Brouilly is one of the principal areas for Gamay-based Beaujolais.

I enjoyed it from the first taste, but it really blossomed over the course of the meal. The wine did have the earthy quality I was looking for, though it was a bit light for steak. In fact, this bottle really made me see why I've seen a number of people suggest Beaujolais as a pairing for Thanksgiving--I think this would work beautifully on turkey day. With the balanced fruitiness and modest alcohol content (12.5%) this is eminently food-friendly.

This wine has definitely made me a lot more open to trying more Beaujolais. In the past, I might occasionally get a Beaujolais Nouveau when it comes out, but my the few "real" Beaujolais I'd tried hadn't impressed. But now I'm beginning to appreciate why Beaujolais has its ardent proponents, whose ranks I may be joining!

Though I really did enjoy the wine, I do stand-by my original instinct that full-bodied, earthy reds would be the best with this. A Chateaneuf-du-Pape, for instance, might be the perfect match for this dish...will have to give it a try!