Sumptuous Steak Sauce: from Jacarandell Farm to Table

Pouring milk on cereal, spreading butter on toast and slicing cheese should never be taken for granted!

From breeding, nurturing, and feeding the dairy cows to making sure they are healthy and happy, is a complex and time consuming business.

A peaceful scene – once the dairy work is over!

Getting up at 4.00am (not me I add hastily), milking the herd twice a day in between feeding, vet requirements, dairy repair and maintenance, and of course looking after our dairy staff. These are all necessary to produce milk, the raw, nutritious product used to make cream, butter and cheese.

We make cream here, but it’s not for sale – that would be another story. We had an old fashioned manual cream separator for the first twenty-five years of marriage – we found it at the local auction, fixed it up and it worked brilliantly.

The wooden handle was turned slowly for a good half an hour to separate the milk from the cream. It’s a complicated system of metal cones in a casing, which spin at an unbelievable speed to separate the cream from the milk. Within a day our cream is so thick, that it won’t pour out the bowl when turned upside down – and it is delicious.

An antique cream separator, similar to our original on the farm

Now we are blessed with an electric separator and it’s a matter of pressing a button, but there is still a lot of running around pouring liquid in and out of containers. A huge volume of milk is used to make a relatively small amount of cream.

Farm cream: thick and delicious

Once the cream has been in the fridge for a couple of days, I make butter. I ladle in about 600 ml of cream into my Magimix, turn it on, and within a couple of minutes the cream has turned into about 500g butter – it’s miraculous. Once the raw butter has been scraped out of the Magimix into a large bowl, I rinse and knead it under cold running water several times to get all the buttermilk out. Salt is then added, and when thoroughly mixed, it is spooned into suitable butter dishes.

Cleaning all the equipment is time consuming and quite painful to be honest. Butter making is something I end up doing after much procrastination … but I will not buy butter!

Beautiful butter.. note Mr Sibanda’s butter knife!

My step mum Pam gave me a wonderful recipe for a sauce for fillet years ago – I actually use it for any steak. It really is a winner – everyone loves it. It has plenty of cream in it, so it’s fairly decadent, but perfect for our situation here with cream and butter on tap. The addition of brandy and mustard makes a wicked combination!

SUMPTUOUS STEAK SAUCE

300 ml cream

4 bayleaves

1 large knob of butter

Salt & pepper

1 heaped teaspoon Dijon Mustard

1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

2 tablespoons brandy

Mix all ingredients together in a small saucepan. Heat through and add brandy at the last moment. Pour over barbequed, fried or grilled steak. (Serves 4.)

The best idea for serving is to take the steak out of the pan, allow it to rest for a few minutes and cut it into strips. Place these onto a warm serving dish. The sauce is then mixed in with the steak juices in the pan, reheated, and finally drizzled over the steak strips. Sprinkle your favourite chopped herbs over this.

Sumptuous Steak Sauce

I use my small Sibanda Spoon to mix this wonderful combination of ingredients to make the most sumptuous steak sauce!

For Jacarandell product enquires please contact Frances on frandell@yoafrica.com

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