Ingredients 

• 300g Dry Aged Rib Eye or Striploin Steak
• 250g White Button Mushrooms (cleaned, trimmed, and sliced)
• 150g Shiitake Mushrooms (cleaned and trimmed)
• 25g Dried Wild Mushrooms
• 2 Shallots (cleaned, trimmed, peeled, and thinly sliced)
• 1 Clove Garlic
• 2 Sprigs Thyme
• 200ml Chicken Stock
• 50ml Madeira Wine
• 100ml Rice Wine
• ½tbsp Soy Sauce
• 50ml Heavy Cream
• Small bunch Parsley (washed, trimmed, and leaves picked)

Instructions

1. Season your steak with salt the night before, or at least a couple of hours in advance of cooking. Before cooking, remove from the fridge to allow the steak to come to temperature.
2. Heat 75ml of water to a boil and pour in a bowl with the dried wild mushrooms. Let sit for 20-30mins to allow the mushrooms to reconstitute.  Remove the wild mushrooms from the liquid and set aside, reserving the liquid.
3. In a non-stick saute pan, cook under a medium high heat till piping hot.  Add 1tbsp olive oil and place your steak and shiitake mushrooms in a pan and cook the steak for approximately 4-5mins per side, till the steak is medium rare (internal temperature 125-130F).  Remove both the steak and shiitake mushrooms from the pan and set aside to keep warm and rest.
4. Add your sliced button mushrooms to the same pan used for cooking the steak and shiitake mushrooms, and saute over high heat till nice and golden brown.  Turn down the heat and add your shallots, garlic, thyme and reconstituted dried wild mushrooms.  Cook until soft and lightly golden brown. Turn the heat back up to high and deglaze the pan, first with the Madeira wine and than Rice wine until reduced till syrupy. Pour in the liquid used to reconstitute the wild mushrooms in, omitting the very bottom portion which contains dirt and sand.  Cook the liquid until reduced by half.  Add your chicken stock and allow it to come up to a boil, than add your cream and soy sauce.  Place all your ingredients used for the sauce in a blender and puree until creamy and smooth.  Pass through a strainer to remove any lumps.
5. Pour your cream sauce onto the bottom of the plate and place your steaks and shiitake mushrooms on top.  Garnish with parsley leaves.

Notes

• When it comes to seasoning with salt, you either season it well in advance or right before cooking.  There’s no middle ground.  The reason being initially the salt draws out the moisture from the meat and dehydrates it, but given time through the process of osmosis, the liquid drawn out will be reabsorbed back into the meat.   Which will than cure and “brine” the meat.  Thus seasoning and making the meat more flavourful and juicy.  If you happen to season your meat a few minutes before cooking, what will happen is the salt will draw out the moisture before being given time to get reabsorbed back into the meat.  That’s why some people complain about their steaks being kinda tough and dry after seasoning with salt.  But if you season it right before cooking, the salt hasn’t had time to draw out any moisture yet. So you’ll be able to season it, but won’t have the added effect of brining/curing your meat.  Timing is key.  So my personal preference is to always season my steaks well in advance, and this works with almost all proteins.  Whether it be chicken, pork, or lamb, it’s almost always better to season in advance.
• If you’re curious why I didn’t simply use straight wild mushrooms in my recipe for the cream sauce, instead of regular plain white button mushrooms?  I’ve tried experimenting using only wild mushrooms before, but the flavour didn’t really improve all that much in comparison with regular white button mushrooms.  Also the addition of dried wild mushrooms are much more flavourful and robust than fresh wild mushrooms.  So they act more as a seasoning, while the white button mushrooms act as body for the sauce.
• When you’re buying white button mushrooms, try to go for larger ones with the caps open and gills exposed.  These will be more flavourful than the smaller ones. Not to mention, it’ll be easier and less time consuming to clean, trim and slice 10 larger ones versus 20-25 smaller ones.
• When you’re cooking steak or any protein for that matter, keep in mind that the temperature will continue to rise another 5-10 degrees due to the residual heat continuing to cook the protein.  So if you’re looking for medium rare at your steak with an internal temperature of 130F, you should take your steaks out of your pan at the 125F mark. 
• If you notice for the sauce, I don’t add any salt but use soy sauce instead.  The soy sauce has a lot of natural umami flavours which salt doesn’t have, which will complement the savouriness of the steak.
• This sauce would also work well with chicken, turkey, veal or pork.  Preferably leaner cuts, as the sauce is quite rich and heavy.  But than again, if you’re a glutton like me, than you don’t mind using this sauce for fatty cuts as well!