The Stroganov/Stroganoff Family

According to Wikipedia:

"The House of Stroganov or Strogonov (Russian: Стро́гановы, Стро́гоновы), French spelling: Stroganoff, was a Russian noble family of highly successful Russian merchants, industrialists, landowners, and statesmen." 

With this background in mind, let us make a modern variety of this Tsarist family recipe!

Selecting a Cut of Beef

You have the option to use a cheap cut of beef and long preparation times, or a good (and more expensive) cut of beef, such as sirloin, and a quick preparation. The recipe below takes the second approach. Total time: about 30 minutes.

Step by Step

First of all, make sure the beef is at room temperature. Do not season the steak at this point. Fry the steak in a very hot skillet for two minutes on each side, wrap in aluminum foil and allow to rest for at least fifteen minutes.

Finely slice the mushrooms and onions (white, red or yellow onions are all fine, depending on your taste buds) and chop or grate two or three cloves of garlic.

Make sure you have your spices ready. The combination of smoked paprika and yellow curry powder may not be a part of the classic recipe, but part of a more modern version (I noticed this combination in one of Rick Stein's cooking shows). The amounts are really up to your own taste, but be prepared to be bold!

Fry the mushrooms in a skillet with some butter on very high heat so they can caramelize; frying at lower heat mushrooms will only make them soggy. Remove the mushrooms with their liquid from the skillet, and add the remaining butter; fry the onions until they start caramelizing. During the last minute of frying, add the garlic.

Actually, all the above steps could be executed some time beforehand. At this point, we will start assembling the dish. 

Finely slice the beef, taking into consideration the texture of the meat (always slice perpendicular to the "thread" of the meat). The beef should still be rare to medium rare at this point.

As we will mix the beef strips with the rest of the dish in a minute, we don't have to worry about medium rare; by adding the strips of sirloin to the mixture they will first of all be coated with this delicious sauce, but also continue to cook a little bit. The beef will be very tender.

On medium heat, warm the mushrooms, onion rings and garlic together, add the sour cream and the spices (the combination with the sour cream will moderate the taste of the spices, so once again be bold). Once everything is warmed through, add the sliced beef, mix well and serve. Traditionally, you could serve this with rice, boiled potatoes but I prefer French fries (add mayonaise if you are Dutch). Decorate with some finely chopped parsley.   

Ingredients

Main course quantities for four:

• Sirloin steak, 400-500 grams; because we will serve the steak in a rich mixture with mushrooms, onions and sour cream, 100 to 125 grams of sirloin per diner will be enough
• Mushrooms, 300-400 grams
• Two large or three medium onions
• Three cloves of garlic
• Smoked paprika
• Curry powder
• Sour cream, 150-250 ml
• Butter for frying
• Chopped parsley to decorate.