Taking responsibility for one’s own actions!

As you all know, I overslept on Sunday, and my significant other decided to go grocery shopping without a list and on an empty stomach, therefore we were stuck with enough food to feed a small third world country. He did however take responsibility for his errors and ended up cooking all day. The end-result that was supposed to be our lunch mesmerised into our dinner (taking photos and cooking doubled the cooking time) and it was DELICIOUS! And this is coming from someone that doesn’t necessarily appreciate a meat-based dinner. Knowing this all too well about me, the sneaky bastard incorporated cheese into the meat roll and ended up with a lot of praising (on and offline) from yours truly.

I do have to mention this, before we start with the technicalities of this dish, that this time, D went all the way and apart from the main course he also made an amazing side dish, therefore, this recipe will have two distinctive parts. If you plan on recreating this recipe, take into consideration the amount of ingredients D bought and the fact that we ended up eating this meal all week long, so unless you plan on cooking for your neighbours as well, divide the quantities at least by 2.

What you’ll need for the main course:

• 625 gr flank steak (that’s two flank steaks, basically the moment I saw those two pieces I realised we were going to eat this all week long-not that I am complainig)
• 500 gr mushrooms
• 30 gr rucola (you can basically add whatever type of leaves you like – baby spinach, salad, etc)
• 15 gr of chives
• 5 gr of fresh thyme (rosemary works well with beef as well)
• 2 medium red onions
• 50 gr grated cheese
• butter (beef tastes infinitely better when cooked with butter instead of oil)

Steps you’ll need to follow:

1. As per usual, arrange all the ingredients for that perfect photo.
2. Start by putting a little butter into a non-stick pan and let it melt over small flame.
3. Put the minced onions in the pan and stir well until it turns soft.
4. Add all the diced mushrooms and stir until they halved in volume.
5. Add the minced chives and stir until the mushrooms turn brown (see photo for reference).
6. Lay the meat flat and put some of the mushroom stew on it. Keep the rest for a little variety on the side.
7. Add the rucola on top of the mushroom stew.
8. Finish the combo with grated cheese and thyme.
9. Roll the meat, securing it with skewer-sticks and then cut it into 3 cm thick slices.
10. Heat some butter into a cast iron pan – if you’re going to fry meat, this is the best type of pan for the best taste (D already tried every other type of pan, save your money)
11. Put the slices into the pan and cook them 2-3 minutes on each side, or until you decide they’re good to eat (we’re normally having medium-rare beef)

Congratulations! The main course is done! Moving along to the side dish…

What you’re going to use:

• 500 gr new potatoes
• 500 gr sweet potatoes (1 large will suffice)
• 250 gr cherry tomatoes (use cherry tomatoes so you won’t need to chop them)
• 10 gr thyme
• 1 medium red onion
• 50 gr grated cheese
• butter
• 1 tbsp pomace olive oil (do not use virgin olive oil for cooking)

The road from a bunch of ingredients to some of the best baked potatoes:

1. Butter the inside of the vessel you are going to use.
2. Pre-heat the oven at 185 degrees C.
3. Throughly wash the potatoes and dice the sweet potato.
4. Evenly spread the sweet potato on the vessel.
5. Top them with the cherry tomatoes and the sliced onion.
6. Cut the new potatoes into halves and put them over everything (they are last as the sweet potato needs more heat)
7. Sprinkle the thyme and pour the tablespoon of olive oil evenly.
8. Add salt and pepper and in the oven they go!

Depending on your oven, they should be done in 20-30 minutes. Right at the end, grate them with the cheese and you’re done. This whole post actually took me to write, a fraction of the time it took D to cook. Even though it took us 4 hours from start to finish, it was so worth it! The combo of beef, greens and cheese alongside new and sweet potatoes is amazing, and once again D won my heart with this dish!

As you’ve been accustomed by now, the nutritional information is from my UP app and it’s for the whole amount of food. You should divide it by 8 in order to get the info for one serving. All in all, this is actually a healthy meal, in spite of the frying part, but only because we used very little butter instead of oil.

I hope you’ll enjoy D‘s improv-meal because I know I did!!!

L.