Aycliffe Today resident chef Debbie Elizabeth serves up a regular mouthwatering treat for our readers.
This week, homemade tomato ketchup with grilled steaks…
Ingredients
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 16 waxy potatoes (use Charlotte or Desiree), scrubbed and sliced lengthways into 1cm slices
• extra virgin olive oil
• 6 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked from 4 of them
• 3 sprigs of fresh sage, leaves picked and torn
• zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 4 x 250g ribeye steaks
Instructions
Either light your barbecue and let it burn down to nice hot glowing coals, or preheat the oven to 180°C/350ºF/gas 4 and heat up your griddle pan.
Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and parboil your potato slices for 5 or 6 minutes until tender but still holding their shape, then drain well in a colander. Toss the potatoes with a glug of olive oil, a good pinch of salt and pepper, half the picked rosemary leaves, the sage leaves and the lemon zest.
Look at your steaks – you’ll notice there’s a big firm piece of white fat right in the middle. Carefully pinch most of it out and then literally push little pieces of it into the steak meat. It may sound a bit mad, but this means you’ll distribute the natural fat through the meat, making it tastier and moist in return. Pat the steaks with olive oil. Chop up the rest of the picked rosemary leaves and sprinkle over both sides of your steaks with a good pinch of salt and pepper as well.
To give your steak and potatoes some extra flavour, tie the two remaining rosemary sprigs together and bash them in a pestle and mortar with a little salt, the lemon juice and a glug of olive oil. As you cook and turn your food, brush it with the rosemary branch to flavour it with all the lovely lemony oily juices from the pestle and mortar.
At this point, if you’re cooking inside on a small griddle pan, you need to start griddling your slices of potato, in batches, until they’re all nicely charred on both sides. Remove them to a roasting tray, in one layer, and pop them into the oven to crisp a little further. Cook the steaks on the griddle pan to your liking, turning them every minute. It’s even better if you’re cooking on a barbecue, because you’ll have more space so you can do it all at the same time. As the potato slices start to look good, move them over to the edge of the barbecue to keep warm while you cook your steaks, and don’t forget to let them rest on a plate before eating.