Sometimes the simplest things can be so good. Like I love spending time planning and prepping a complex dish, for days making stocks and sauces, seeing it come together and totally messing the kitchen up. But then you can have a dish like a perfectly cooked steak, with few garnishes, and you think, wow, that was easy, so much time not wasted.
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Recently, on a weekend getaway, I was reminded of how satisfying an uncomplicated dish can be. We had a bespoke free weekend, unusual due to the fairly intense teenage sporting roster we have continually going down. It wasn't until the weekend was upon us and we looked at the various calendars that mysteriously sync and rule our lives that we realised that there was nothing on. No camps, training sessions, games, nothing. Sweet, so we fuelled up the four-wheel-drive and headed to the mountains.
With the infamous, widely-reported "polar vortex" almost upon us a few weeks back, we knew that it would be cold at our destination, Leura in the mystical Blue Mountains. Leura, the place where all Lladro goes to die, where Christmas is so popular they celebrate it twice a year, Leura, where my father-in-law keeps his inadequately-locked and overflowing liquor cabinet.
While we were browsing expensive, Spanish porcelain figurines, seemingly of little known Disney princesses and waited, heavily rugged up in corduroy and dusty fur, for this Antarctic storm to hit, we did note that the food in Leura has changed quite a bit. Sure, you can still get be tantalised by Christmas-in-July at Flemish flavours, but there are a number of pretty neat, modern diners in and around the Leura mall that have already attracted a smattering of hipsters up the hill to make coffee and pull pork as they all seem to do when they colonise a place.
The Leura garage serves a simple range of "lighter and heavier share" dishes. I can't wait until we get back to just calling it as starters and mains, plates of food that you can share but don't need it tirelessly pointed out that this is what you do with them. The garage is popular and incorporates a good use of local products and nice wine list, but the new kid on the block is Beyond Vintage.
I was intrigued as to what "Beyond Vintage" means – for me it's catching up on sleep, trying to remove red stains from everything and tasting a lot of wine. For this new wine bar, it was a tiny space filled with wine racks, a small, industrious kitchen where they pumped out tapas-style food to go with their, OK but still growing range of wines.
One of the dishes was beef tagliata. A bit of blast from the past, this simple Italian sliced steak and salad dish did go through a popular phase years ago when rocket hit the market along with radicchio and other bitter Italian salad leaves. While this dish was good, the steak a little over-cooked, and innocuously bred, I did like the combination of peppery rocket, lemon juice and shaved parmesan on the steak.
Clearly in such a simple arrangement, the quality of the ingredients is imperative for the dish to sing. The steak needed here is good old sirloin or porterhouse. This is a tender cut from the lower back of the beast. It's flavourful but probably seen as second fiddle to the rib steak itself. What it is though is consistent, an evenly proportioned muscle that can be cut into any thickness. The trick is to get a steak that comes off a well-raised cow that is a few years old and, if possible, has a waygu mum and dad. It'll be thus of good size, well marbled with sweet, juicy fat and expensive so you'll want to do it justice.
After this the olive oil should be the best you can find: fresh, extra-virgin, cold pressed. The parmesan should be of date-of-purchase quality, aged and nutty. A good thick-skinned lemon and lots of good salt flakes and black pepper to grind over the steaks before you grill them. The cooking times depend on how thick the steaks are, but they should be served medium-rare, the sauce is just the meat juices and lemon juice.
A lovely, simple dish where the quality of the half dozen ingredients will shine and, for me, there will be lots of time to work out the padlock combination of the cabinet holding the whisky, gin and brandy as the ice storm finally blasts in from the South Pole.
Beef tagliata (per person)
150-200g prime sirloin
1 lemon
a big handful of wild rocket
parmigiano reggiano
salt and pepper
olive oil
Place the rocket in a bowl and finely grate the lemon zest directly onto the salad, drizzle and toss with olive oil and set aside. Have the steak at room temperature, season with salt and pepper.
Heat a thick based frypan until it starts to smoke. Add a good splash of oil and cook the steak for 3-4 minutes on first side, turn over and cook for 2-3 minutes on the other. Place on two layers of foil and squeeze over the lemon juice. Seal and rest for five minutes. Make sure you keep the lemony, meaty juices as they form.
Once the steak is rested and at piece, slice across and place on a serving plate. Spoon over the collected juices and top with rocket salad. Using a vegetable peeler, shave the parmesan over the dish and serve.
