This is a dish that my father and I used to eat in Kuching, Sarawak in the 1960s. Sarawak is a significant producer of pepper, so it seems appropriate. The important thing is the sauce; normally you'd eat it with grilled fillet steak or rump steak:

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I've found it difficult to get consistent thickness with this sauce. In the past I have tended to reduce it, for no particularly good reason. On 28 September 2014 I didn't, and the sauce was far too thin, so I reduced the original 50 ml of water to an absolute minimum. That still wasn't enough. I reduced the original 30 ml of cognac to 5 ml, but on 23 January 2016 I finally got it so thick that I was able to increase that quantity to 10 g.

Ingredients

For two steaks:

quantity		ingredient		step
7 g		black pepper corns		1
3 g		stock powder		2
little		water		2
60 g		sour cream		3
10 g		cognac		4

Preparation

1. Coarsely crush the pepper. I use a hand-driven Italian grain mill for this purpose, set to 2 on the scale. Crushing it under a Chinese chopper works, but it's slow business, and you'll need about 50% more pepper for the same flavour. Most blenders make the resulting pepper too fine.

2. Dissolve the stock powder in just enough hot water to dissolve it. The result might dry up; that's OK.

3. Add the cream and stir well until mixed. Warm if necessary.

4. Just before serving, heat up. Add the pepper and cognac, mix well. Pour over the steaks.