Food You Can Eat: Joan Crawford’s Broiled Steak in a Roquefort-Mustard Sauce

This recipe probably came from Crawford’s My Way of Life (1971), a memoir/self-help guide/entertaining manual. It’s on various sites all over the internet. The sauce alone is worth it, and there’s a cooking trick from her that I tried that I wouldn’t do again. Sorry, Joan.

Joan is somewhat scarce with details but here’s what I did.

Spark up the broiler to 450—500 degrees. I set my particle accelerator oven to 450.

Wipe a room-temperature 1 1/4 lb. steak, about 1 1/2” inches thick, that’s what the Forager-in-Chief brought home, with a damp cloth and season liberally with salt and pepper. Normally you would let the steak rest, but not our Joanie, so I pushed it in with the palms of my hands. Rub a (peeled) clove of garlic all over and then brush with melted butter. I went very sparingly with the butter.

In Joan’s world the steak just kind of broils itself, but I put mine in a slightly heated cast iron skillet from the oven, put it back in the oven with the steak, and hoped for the best. Cook for about 6 or 7 minutes. While it is in there, make the sauce. Beat together 1 “square” of Roquefort (I used a piece that was probably about 3 or 4 oz.) with 1 tbsp. “prepared mustard” (I used Dijon, 2 tbsp.) and 4 tbsp. melted butter (I only ended up using 2. I did not grow up on a dairy farm.)

Flip the steak and let it cook for another 4 or 5 minutes. Top with the sauce and cook for 1 more minute. This way the sauce will bake in. That’s why I used the skillet, so no errant sauce landed in the oven and cause our sensitive smoke alarm to send our neighbors scurrying into the hallway.

Joan tells you to leave the oven door ajar and see what a difference that makes. The only difference it made was the Ravenous Hound wanted to climb into the oven to get at the steak, so I had to match him in his vigilance. But what happened was I left the oven going, just in case, took out the steak, stabbed it with the meat thermometer, and it wasn’t quite done (should be at least 145 degrees) so back in it went for another couple of minutes. I then let the steak rest for 5 or 10 minutes while I swilled the last of my pre-dinner drink, details below.

I must say the buttery Roquefort-mustard sauce was very good. This is probably a very old French recipe but I have never bothered researching this. I served this with garlic mashed potatoes and some mashed squash. I overdid it on melting the butter for the steak so this was a good way to use it up.

But what to drink with it? Well, Joan was a big fan of vodka (if you watched Ryan Murphy’s mesmerizing Feud you’ll see that Crawford toward the end has a flask of it on her person) so I made a big glass of vodka straight vodka martini to start with. But I, like I think most people, don’t like to drink hard alcohol with meals, so I switched over to a glass of red wine. I can’t remember what it was, it was kind of light though which was good with this carb-supercharged meal.