Rump Steak With Pepper Salsa

It is once again time for Ye Olde Recipe Collection, I did say I'd picked out two cards at the beginning of the week.



This was originally planned for last night, however, due to my DIY-ing, I ran out of time, and so postponed to today.

In addition I had a bit of a baking day today. The main thing I did was the strawberry mousse cake, which will be for Lundulph's birthday celebrations tomorrow. Lundulph agreed that I would do the same cake a second time, in order to get the gelatin amounts right. Fingers crossed that it works, I botched up folding the strawberry purée into the whipped cream and it went all runny, but I definitely used the right amount of gelatin. I think.

Then I decided to make a large batch of bread and once and for all reduce the amount of sourdough in the jar in the fridge. I fed the starter in the evening before and ended up using 500 g of it on a 1:2:3 formula, where the liquid was 500 g water and 500 g Guinness. This was very interesting, as the 1500 g flour was far from enough, I ended up with a thick batter instead of dough, so I ended up adding a further 200 g flour. And this time I went through the process properly with two stretches and folds during the rising and properly shaping the loaves and tucking in to get the surface tension and got a fantastic oven spring. Also, despite using white flour, thanks to the Guinness, the breads ended up looking rather brown, almost like rye bread. They are gifts to the family for tomorrow, so I've no idea what they taste like, I hope it's good.



Then finally I got onto the evening meal. The recipe is from Waitrose again. The card doesn't actually make any recommendations as to how to serve as a complete meal, so after conferring with Lundulph, we settled on potatoes, as being the best carb accompaniment to a steak. Then I spotted some nice looking curly kale in the shop and decided to give it a go. I've had it once before at a dinner at our neighbours a few years back and remember it was nice.

The salsa part seemed a bit on the not enough side, so I decided to double it. I also thought that a plum tomato wouldn't work grilled and de-seeded, so I went for a beef tomato instead.

Ingredients
Salsa
2 large red peppers
1 large beef tomato
2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
1 hot red chilli
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
salt to taste

2 beef rump steaks
crushed black pepper

new baby potatoes
sliced curly kale

Method

1. Pre-heat the grill on medium high. Wash the peppers, tomato, oregano and chilli.


2. Quarter the peppers and remove the seeds. Halve the tomato and remove the woody stalk part.


3. Grill the peppers skin side up for about 10 minutes, adding the tomato halves skin side up after 3 minutes.


4. In the mean time, chop the oregano and chilli and mix together with the olive oil and vinegar in bowl.


5. Steam the potatoes and the curly kale according to instructions on the packet.


6. Once the peppers and tomato are done, their skin should be blackened. Place in a plastic bag or a saucepan with a lid and let stand for a few minutes. Then peel the skins, de-seed the tomatoes and dice both finely and stir in with the oregano, chilli, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.


7. Sprinkle crushed black pepper on the steaks and fry them to the required doneness, then serve with the potatoes, curly kale and salsa.

Well, the two beef rump steaks I got were good, but one was rather thick and frying them together proved a challenge. Besides I was a bit distracted with the potatoes and curly kale, thus I didn't cook the steaks long enough and didn't turn them quickly enough, thus the thicker steak seemed almost charcoaled on the outside and was way too rare in the middle. I had to fry it for another couple of minutes. The thinner steak was good for me, I like it medium rare or well done, so it was fine, but felt a bit on the grisly side. So if I'm to do this again, I won't go for rump steak, but for something fancier.

The curly kale wasn't as nice as I remember it. What mostly put me off was the texture, it felt a bit like paper. Lundulph seemed to like it though.

The salsa was a really nice surprise, I hadn't made any thoughts about it, but it turned out really well. Of course, grilling peppers isn't quite the same as roasting them in a pepper roaster, in the 10 minutes, they didn't cook through like they do in the pepper roaster, but I think this actually was an advantage for the salsa. The beef tomatoes were quite fleshy and didn't go too mushy under the grill. I generally don't like grilled or fried tomatoes, unless blended, so this worked well.

On the whole a bit fiddlier than expected, but was a nice meal. The salsa was the best, I thought, and I'm glad I made a double amount.