Do you ever have one of those nights where you think: “hmmm, i’ll just do something simple tonight, I have some steak, some veg, perfect.” Are those famous last thoughts or what?
To spin an unsubtle, allegory, I remember my parents deciding to redo their bathroom. They did it, and in the process realised that if they did that to the bathroom, then they should do this to the bedroom. And so on. By the time they finished the winds of change had well and truly swept through the house leaving nothing untouched. Nothing.
This is what happened to my *ahem* “simple” steak supper. I was just going to steam a pack of choi sum I’d bought on Mare Street at the weekend. But y’know, it’d be a real shame not to have potatoes, and there are some lovely new potatoes in the box… And if I’m going to roast them, I could use up those cherry tomatoes as well. Ooo – what’s that at the back of the fridge – a forgotten punnet of large mushrooms, they’d be nice too. And so on.
The pickled salad
It wasn’t so much winds as hurricanes and tonadoes that swept through the kitchen leaving a half empty fridge and a pile of washing up in their wake. Steak and choi sum, roast tomatoes and new potatoes, mushrooms in wine and oregano, a lightly picked salad of radish, khol rabi and cucumber, bearnaise sauce…
Still, it was worth it and at least we got lunch the next day out of it too. The steak was fabulous, it was the red and meaty bedrock of the meal: sirloin from the Ginger Pig on Lauriston Road. Sir Loin. Arise Sir Loin of the Ginger Pig… It was magnificant.
Cooked on a superhot griddle for two minutes a side, it was a 2cm thick piece of tender and tasty meat from the longhorn cattle the GP raise on the North York moors.
The fabulous steak
The rest was a pretty good accompaniment – lots of sweet roasted flavours for the toms and pots, rich and winey mushrooms, slightly-bitter-in-a-good-way choi sum, buttery bearnaise (shop bought from the GP not made) and a super zingy, pickled salad to bring taste buds bounding pack to life.
No recipes because everything was very simply cooked. Toms and pots were roast for 45 mins at 200oC, choi sum was steamed, mushrooms were stir-fried in butter and wine for about 10-15 minutes, the salad ingredients were chopped and marinated in 150mls of rice vinegar and a tablespoon of caster sugar for 30 mins. Then we ate.
hehehe this happens to me ALLLL THE TIME. in fact it used to happen so often that we’d end up having feasts every night and now my bf has subjected me to buy only enough food for each night every week, so I have no extras
that pickled salad looks YUM!
Hi there! It is the Gourmet Butcher from Donald Russell here! Your steak dinner looks fantastic! Good effort! Simple is sometimes best!
Have you seen our butchery video on steaks? A mini butchery masterclass if you like. http://www.donaldrussell.com/cm/movies.htm
Again great effort and that pictures are mouthwatering!
@catty Thanks! The perils of having a weekly veg delivery is that it all builds up – i tend to have a massive cookout when it comes, and then the day before in a frantic attempt to use up the rest. The pickled salad is a real palate reviver after heavy flavours – it cuts the richness/saltiness – with SURGICAL precision….
@Gourmet Butcher – Thanks! It was pretty good. There’s nothing like good meat cooked simply to foreground provenance and quality. I like stuff i don;t have to fiddle around with too much. I will check out the masterclass asap – butchery is something i would like to know some more about.
hahahahaa happens to me, too!
@maninas It’s always the way, you start off small with small plans and then… they just blossom out of control
Hey – I got the pan!!!! Thanks for the tip off!
bright, beautiful photos. but shame you didnt share any of the sliced steak. too busy eating? well done, i say.
I can never stop messing around with ‘classics’, it’s a plight! It looks delicious.
@maninas – great news – glad you got it. Did yo see anything else that was a great deal there?
@shayma – thanks! Once you start eating that steak… mmm-mmm – no time for photos then…
It was perfectly rare in the middle though, you can take my work for it.
@lizzie – good on you! Classics are there for messing around with ;-D
I got some silicone muffin cups (green and pink, they’re gorgeous!.
I also saw some whistling stove-top kettles that I liked, but I got one recently from somewhere else. Still, sth to bear in mind!
I saw those kettles too – very tempting, as were the array of volcanic casseroles. Sigh. I love Le Creuset. Sigh.
I know! Me, too!
I love the whistling of those kettles! And now that I have an induction hob, they heat up much more quickly than my electric kettle.