Steak Dianne, tarragon potatoes and corn

Ingredients:

• Fillet steak
• Corn
• Kipfler potatoes (home grown)
• Tarragon
• Parsley
• Brandy
• Dijon mustard
• Worcestershire sauce
• Butter
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
  

Method

1. Preheat oven to around 200 C
2. Slice the potatoes into even thickness rounds
3. Melt the butter in a pan and splash in some olive oil to help prevent it from burning.
4. Chuck in finely sliced tarragon
5. Layer potatoes in the pan (careful it spits if the spuds are still wet)
6. Oil and season the steak and sear it well on both sides.
7. Take steak out of pan and steak in oven until done the amount you want.
8. While the steak is finishing cooking, nuke the heck out of the corn
9. Reheat the steak pan (don't clean it) and when hot again
10. Deglaze with around 1/2 cup of brandy (careful it will catch fire)
11. When the fire goes out pour in 1/3 cup of Worcestershire sauce.
12. Stir then put in a table spoon of dijon, if it thickens too much add a little beef stock.
13. Melt in about 50g of unsalted butter whilst stirring
14. And finally season to taste and chop finely and chuck in the parsley.
15. Remove corn from nukebox, steak from oven, drain spuds on paper towel and plate up thusly.
    

Time to cook: 20 minutes
Cost per serve: $8
Recipe inspiration: The fresh tv show from yesterday.

Steak with herb sauce, salad with dijon honey vingairette

Ingredients:

• Steak (fillet)
• Prosciutto
• Rocket
• Spinach
• Cucumber
• Apple
• Orange
• Celery
• Parsley
• Mint
• Coriander
• Olive oil
• White balsamic vinegar
  
• Dijon mustard
• Honey
  
• Salt
• Almonds
  

Method:

1. Heat char grill to stupid hot.
2. Fry prosciutto in pan until crisp.
3. Chop and toast almonds.
4. Oil and season steak and whack on grill.
5. Make mixture of 1 part vinegar, 3 parts oil
6. Add 1 tbsp dijon, 1 tbsp honey, shake vigorously.
7. Taste and salt if required.
8. Turn steak after 5 minutes (or so). Season just before you turn it.
   
9. Segment orange, core peel slice apple. Whack in bowl
   
10. Make thin slices of cucumber with speed peeler or mandolin. Whack in bowl
11. Slice celery thinly (peel if it's stringy)
    
12. Chuck leaves in bowl
13. Break prosciutto up into bits and chuck in bowl.
14. Press steak and when it feels right (Should feel like the meaty part of your hand does when you touch your thumb to forefinger) remove it from the grill and let rest.
15. Whack herbs, inner leaves from celery, a little olive oil, some grated Parmesan, Salt and almonds in a blender and blitz.
16. Plate up salad and steak. Drizzle salad with vingairette and steak with herb sauce.

Time to prepare: 25 minutes
Cost per serve: $12
Inspiration: This one is all mine.

Steak with steamed veg

Porterhouse with steamed peas and corn



Nothing special here and no photo, this meal was simply body maintenance food. As an aside there's a reason that Aldi's meat is cheaper, anything that needs to be packed in a special gas is suspect in my book.



Ingredients

• Porterhouse steak
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive oil
• Peas'n'corn frozen mix.

Method

Let the steak come to room temperature (or least lose the fridge chill) then salt, pepper and oil it. Stick it on a hot as you can get it griddle pan and turn it just once. Use your thumb to figure out how cooked it is, don't be tempted to cut into it. Let it rest under some loose foil for 5 minutes. Whack on warmed plate. Veg was stuck in a bowl and microwaved.

Time to prepare: 15 minutes
Number of serves: 3
Cost of ingredients: $12.80
Recipe inspiration: Distinct lack of it.

Restaurant Meal: Water and Grass

Char grilled boned quail, crisp polenta, shaved fennel, orange and parsley salad; aged porterhouse, potato fondant, roasted shallots and red wine jus; and chocolate, banana and cardamom beignets with vanilla bean anglaise

Water and Grass Restaurant is at 32 Bourke Street in Melbourne, 03 9650 7020Just as well I didn't get any photo's of this meal, there is no way I could fit that title in the layout I use. This restaurant was really sad, it was well presented with a nice ambience, it is well sited with a really nice menu and it still couldn't seem to get a customer. I went in there with a group of 17 and the commis told me they did 25 covers for the night. That's rough for a 200 ish seat restaurant on a Friday night, even more so when it's extremely handy to the theatre district in Melbourne.

The food itself was tasty and well sized, but it seemed to be missing that zing that a great restaurant manages to add to every meal. The guy that organised our event tells me it used to be a Crotian themed restaurant and changed owners a couple of months ago. Perhaps they just haven't managed to tune up the menu yet, *shrug*.

Unfortunately I have trouble recommending this restaurant to people as it was on the medium to high side for prices, but just didn't return the value I'd expect.

The title covers the ingredients so I won't bother to cover them again, but they did have a malee root fired char grill to cook the steaks on and it did a pretty good job, even if the dude driving it had trouble with what rare means.

Cost of meal: $70 ex drinks
Time to prepare: As you can expect in an empty restaurant the response from the kitchen was fantastic.

Steak with Bernaise Sauce, Fried New Potatoes and Corn

Steak with bernaise sauce, fried new potatoes and corn.











Going to start a new trend tonight, I'll include a brief method along with the list of ingredients for the meal. This one was very tasty although the bernaise was thicker than I would have liked. The steak was so tasty that I even got my wife (who's a "I've have it on the shoeleather side of well done kinda gal) to eat it medium rare.


Ingredients:

• Steak
• Bernaise sauce
• New potatoes
• Corn
• Salt
  
• Pepper
• Canola oil

Season then oil and say 4 minutes each side on the grill to make a pretty (and tasty) pattern.
Potatoes are soaked in brine for a while and then thrown straight into another pan and left to go crunchy on one side. Then shake the pan and crunch up the other side.
Corn simply steam.


Bernaise sauce

• white wine
• tarragon vinegar
• tarragon, chopped
• shallots
• butter
• egg yolks
• lemon juice
• salt
• pepper

Boil wine, vinegar tarragon, shallots and pepper until almost all gone
In a bowl over boiling water whisk the egg yolks until starting to thicken, add the butter bit by bit ensuring its incorporated fully. Dump in herbs and lemon juice and whisk until suitably thick.

Time to prepare: About 30 minutes
Number of serves: 4
Cost of ingredients: $40
Recipe inspiration: Many bistro meals eaten over the years, well except for the corn.

Steak and Veg

Steak and Veg













Simple, quick and relatively yummy.

• Porterhouse steak
• Corn
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Carrots
  

Time to cook: About 15 minutes
Cost of ingredients: About $15
Number of serves: 3

Steak Sandwich

Steak Sandwich













Late night home and just me eating, so I whipped up a quickie steak sandwich. Made a quick mayo whilst waiting for the steak to cook. All in all very tasty.

• Fillet steak
• Turkish pide
• "Cheese" slice
• Green leaves
• Kumato tomato
• Tomato sauce

Seeded mustard mayo

• Egg yolk
• Canola oil
• Salt
• White wine vinegar
• Seeded mustard
  

Time to cook: About 15 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $11

Steak with Salsa Verde, Pot Sticker Potatoes and Spinach Salad

Porterhouse Steak
Salsa Verde
Pot Sticker New Potatoes
Spinach Salad








Tasty enough meal, perhaps a little too much lemon on the spinach.

Porterhouse with Salsa Verde

• Char grilled porterhouse steak
  
• Garlic
• Anchovies
• Capers
• Lemon juice and zest
• Olive oil
• Basil sprigs
• Parsley sprigs
• Salt
  

Pot Sticker Potatoes

• New potatoes
• Salt
• Water
  
• Olive Oil
  These are great and easy, just oil a pan and get it smoking hot, toss in spuds, wait for them to stick, shake, wait 3 minutes, add a little water, cover and serve when water has gone.

Spinach Salad

• Spinach leaves
• Lemon Juice
• Salt
• Olive Oil

Time to cook: 20 minutes.