Beef Steak with Double Trouble Salad

Sounds good, right? What could it be? To be honest, it’s not something we haven’t cooked before, but the combinations we used this time were really good, with some surprising tastes.

So, the beef, you already know the drill, sear it in a pan on high heat, pop it in the oven for how long it takes to get to your desired taste (for extra help, this is how I do it, it’s really simple and intuitive, and I bet you already knew this).

Now double trouble salad. Kinda cheated here, the 1^st salad is a fried new potato salad, we’ve done it before, it is one of the starts of our kitchen and the combinations of herbs and small, delicious potatoes never ceases to amaze me. So for about 500 grams of potatoes I used 1 handful of chopped parsley (the curly leaved type one), 1 handful chopped tarragon, and about half a handful of chopped spring garlic (only the white part). 

For cooking the potatoes, bring to a boil a pot of salted water, pop the washed spuds in there (don’t bother peeling them, just wash and clean them with a towel) with a bunch of parsley (don’t chop it, put the whole thing in there). Let it boil for 4 minutes, remove from water (discard the parsley), let it dry for 1-2 minutes, and the put the potatoes in a heavy base pan with a generous amount of olive oil, on high heat (make sure the oil is nice and hot; for an extra kick you can also fry the potatoes with one or 2 chilli, the spuds will infuse with their hotness). Cook like this for about 5 minutes, coating the potatoes with the hot oil, the reduce heat to medium high, cover the pan and cook for another 10-15 minutes (or more, depending on the size of the potatoes). 

After they are done, transfer them to a big bowl, drop the herbs on them, mix everything together and add some more salt and pepper.

Now for the second salad. In my opinion this one brought the whole dish together, with some very nice and green combinations of flavours. So take around 6 baby carrots, same amount of small cucumbers (not the big, watery kind, use the small, hard ones), about of 2 tbs of chopped fresh mint, 1 tbs of grinded cumin seeds, and about 25 grams of fried pine nuts. Use a veggie peeler, cut the carrots and cucumbers in thin strips and mix it with the mint, cumin, salt and pepper. 

Prepare a simple lemon juice olive oil dressing (for 1tbs of olive oil, we use 2 of the lemon juice), fry your pine nuts, and mix everything together. The result is a very fresh, nutty salad that goes really well with the meat and the potato salad. Pair it with a nice bottle of Syrah, and you got yourself a very nice dish.

Almost forgot, you can make ahead a very nice and easy sauce for the meat: just wisk together 100 grams of cream (I used 24% fat), about 1 tbs of English mustard (tried this recipe with Dijon, liked the English one better), 1 tbs of olive oil and 2-3 tbs of lemon juice (feel free to add more if you feel the sauce is to heavy), salt and pepper. Mix it up and store it in the fridge until the meat is done, super easy and very nice in this combination.

Enjoy!