Filet Mignon with Bearnaise Sauce

Kitchen Play has really challenged me lately with the monthly Progressive Menus. If you have never heard of this contest, then you really should click over tho Kitchen Play and check it out. I will warn you that the recipes seem somewhat intimidating at first glance, to this cook anyway! And this month was no different. The sponsor this month was one I had never heard of, but took great interest in. This month's sponsor is Safest Choice Eggs. As you may know from a previous post, I LOVE eggs, so this was especially exciting to me. One thing you may not know about me is that my family and I raise chickens for meat and eggs. I will admit that I occasionally give thought to salmonella, but the thought never sticks around too long and yes, we eat raw cookie dough and cake batter around here. We have thankfully never had a problem with it. I will tell you that I'm very careful with the handling of our eggs. We gather them daily, wash them before use and keep them refrigerated. Our hens are raised on pasture whenever possible and then given natural grain when needed. All this to say, that I'm pretty confident that our eggs are safe and healthy. Given all of this, I still have an interest in these "new" eggs on the market and I especially wanted to try Karen's Filet Mignon with Spicy Bearnaise Sauce. Given that the eggs in the sauce are not cooked and I wanted to participate in the contest, I decided to find the eggs and make the recipe. According to Safest Choice Egg's website, Publix is the only store that carries these eggs in my area. I'm sorry to say that I could not find the eggs at our two different Publix stores. Well, this did present a dilemma for me as my filets were already thawed out. After discussing it with my husband, we decided to use our fresh eggs for the sauce.

I literally pulled these three eggs out from under a hen that was sitting on them! Now these are REALLY fresh eggs!

The sauce was relatively easy to put together, I say this tongue in cheek because I had a grumpy two-year-old on my hip the whole time! I'm not kidding either. Seriously, even with the baby on my hip, it was almost a snap to put together. The results are so worth the effort too! My children loved it so much that they were putting it on their potatoes and broccoli as well as their steak.

I was rather klutzy in the kitchen tonight. First, I had no scallions, just green onions, which I think are basically the same thing, so I used those. I also did not have tarragon and could not find it at Whole Foods. A quick Swagbucks search gave me a few ideas of what to substitute for the tarragon. I subbed fresh rosemary and a pinch of basil. I also did not have the tarragon vinegar so I used rice vinegar in place of this. I plan to make an effort to add tarragon and the vinegar to my pantry as this is a classic spice for bearnaise sauce. Even with all these substitutions, the sauce was heavenly.

Another klutzy thing I did was that I popped open a bottle of petite sirah to add to the sauce. a couple of teaspoons ended up in the saucepan before I realized it was a red wine! Yikes! I quickly grabbed a bottle of white and forged ahead, undaunted!

I will definitely be making this again and playing around with some variations of it. The whole family loved it and my husband thought it was a very nice meal. I have always grilled our steaks after marinating them so pan browning them was a little scary to me, but these filets turned out to be just lovely. They had a nice amount of pink in the center and melted in our mouths.

Please join in the fun at Kitchen Play. Most likely, you will discover new recipes and techniques, I know I have.