Thin-cut sirloin steak with coffee-brandy sauce

I’m not one to cook savoury dishes with the likes of chocolate, coffee or Coca-Cola. But there’s an exception to every rule. This recipe has one of those — the coffee — as well as brandy, and there’s another unlikely ingredient in it: moskonfyt (grape must syrup, a speciality of the Cape wine industry. For those readers from outside South Africa, a syrup is made by reducing fermented grape juice).

Coffee and moskonfyt in a steak sauce? If that all sounds outlandish, the proof is in the flavour. Also in the sauce is onion and garlic, to start with. And it is finished with cream, because, despite its eccentricity, the sauce falls within the category of creamed sauces for steak. And if you happen to own a steakhouse, you might want to give this a try and consider adding it to your menu. That’s how confident I am.

The development of this recipe was occasioned by the arrival of a product box of Jacobs instant coffee at my door. The marketers could not have known that this is my daily daytime tipple, so to speak. Much as I love coffee made from freshly ground beans et al, and I own a Nespresso machine, I cannot drink more than one mega-hit brew a day, so the rest of my daily coffee intake is Jacobs, because it has the flavour I like without the fuss.

So I needed to cook with it, and sweet dishes seemed too obvious. After plenty of thought and some research into savoury coffee dishes, I spotted some thin-cut sirloin steaks at my local supermarket. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m enjoying my steak and get to a point when I’ve really had enough, yet half of it is still on my plate. These steaks, about 110g each, seemed ideal. It was clear they’d cook super quickly, so I could make a sauce before grilling them, sauté some blanched vegetables, and supper would be ready in minutes. I also fried some diced potatoes and onions in an air fryer, so please come back here this Friday for that recipe.

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