Olympic Food Challenge: Argentina - Steak with Chimmichurri Sauce

Tonight for the Olympic Food Challenge I am cooking the only recipe that I have tested in advance, Steak with Chimmichurri Sauce.  Argentina and steak go together like Wenlock and Mandeville.  Such is the affinity between grilled beef and Argentina that a large number of Argentinian Steak Houses have sprung up around the globe.  I've eaten in such restaurants in Leeds, London and Amsterdam and seen them in most of the cities that I have visited.


I love steak.  Before Z changed her mind about vegetarianism it was my go to meal if I was eating alone or in a restaurant.  These days we eat steak at home for celebration meals, but the addition of the Argentinian sauce, chimmichurri, really lifts the meal to another level.  Back in May I discovered that there are as many recipes for chimmichurri as there are fish in the sea.  I chose what I thought was a good looking, yet basic recipe and made copious notes while we were eating.

Tonight I followed the annotated and food splattered list to make my own version of this classic sauce.  It is really simple to make too.  Onion, garlic, parsley, oil, vinegar and oregano are put into a blender and blitzed until a sauce is formed.  Our house recipe has about twice as much parsley as any I have seen but it works really well against the raw onion and garlic.  We had skinny chips and corn on the cob with our steak and settled down to watch the opening ceremony.  It looks like the Olympics have arrived.

Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

We eat a well balanced and varied diet at home.  In fact if you flick back through the last 170 posts on Tonight's Menu you will find very little repetition.  There are certain meals, risotto, meatballs etc. that we love and cook more frequently.  There are certain ingredients, especially chicken, that crop up so often that I'm starting to wonder if we eat too much of them.

Over the last week we have eaten three vegetarian meals, one each of chicken and pork and two varieties of beef mince in tomato sauces.  What I realised that I've missed is sinking my teeth into a properly cooked steak.  The last time we had some was two months ago and that was in a restaurant, so it doesn't count.

There was a packet of sirloin steak in this month's meat box from Swillington Farm.  I took that out of the freezer yesterday to ensure that we would be eating beef tonight.  I cooked the steak in a hot pan and finished it in the oven, but what to serve with it?  Well, one of the countries that I have drawn for The Olympic Food Challenge is Argentina.  I will be cooking steak on that night too.  Steak is to Argentina as chorizo is to Spain.  The clincher for me for cooking steak to represent Argentina is Chimichurri sauce, a garlic and parsley salsa that is ubiquitous with steak in that part of the world.

I did some research and discovered that everybody has their own version of chimichurri.  The base is garlic, parsley, oil and seasoning.  After that additions include; vinegar, oregano, chilli, coriander, tomatoes, the list is seemingly endless.  To give myself a fighting chance during the Olympic Food Challenge, I decided to make a simple version and make notes so that I could tweak the flavours in a month or so.

For tonight's chimichurri, I blended together; three cloves of garlic, half an onion, a big handful of parsley and two teaspoons of oregano.  I then added six tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, the juice of half a lemon, a pinch of salt and half a teaspoon of smoked hot paprika.  To say that it was punchy is a bit of an understatement.  It was fantastic, but next time I'll use red onion instead of white, include much more parsley and use a mix of smoked and regular garlic, assuming I still have some smoked garlic in the house.

Steak and Chips

Since the arrival of our son some 18 months ago our ability to eat out at night has been somewhat hampered.  We still manage to sneak in the odd pub meal but these tend to be Saturday or Sunday lunches and not nights out.  The reason for the lack of blog action these last few days is that we are currently on holiday in Edinburgh, visiting my Mum, and I've tried to keep as far away from technology as possible.

We have still been eating well; salmon in soy and ginger, baked piri piri chicken and a massive take-away curry to name a few meals.  Tonight, however, Mum has volunteered to babysit so that Z and I can go out for a pre-anniversary meal.  The last few times we have been up to Edinburgh we have been eating our way around the mini-chain of The Dogs restaurants and tonight we have finally been able to complete the set, with a meal at Amore Dogs.

Amore, as you can probably tell, is an Italian restaurant.  Its laid back atmosphere, plastic jugs of water and images of dogs all over the place, all help to remind you that you are only downstairs from the original The Dogs, which is a modern British bistro.

As it's a special occasion* I did what most right minded men do.  I ordered a steak, although I wasn't daft enough to order the t-bone.  The sirloin marinaded in garlic and rosemary was great.  Z had pasta with a duck sauce which didn't quite hit the mark but the tomato salad that she ordered to go with it was great.

Hopefully Tonight's Menu will get back on track once we're back home.

*it'll be our 8th wedding anniversary in a couple of days.

Beef Wellington

It was 31st December 1999 that I realised that I didn't much care for being in groups on New Year's Eve.  We had gone to a circus themed party at a friend of a friend's house.  It was fancy dress.

Those of you who know me will know that I love fancy dress.  This time however, I had different ideas.  This was the millennium, the dawning of tomorrow.  The future, including hover-cars and food in pill form, started at 00:00 hours.  I wasn't going to spend that night dressed as a clown.  Not when I had already found a pukka silver shirt and blue hair dye.

The party went as house parties do.  I was found mostly in the kitchen, chatting to those I knew (about 30%) about stuff*.  This was fine, until 9:30pm when the assembled guests were ushered into the living room, I had a bad feeling about this.  I asked my "friend" what was going on.

"We're going to do our acts now." he uttered matter of factly.  "What acts?"  "You know, we all have to do a circus act as part of the fun." My heart sank faster than the Belgrano.  I had no idea about this part of the party.  Z and I quickly cobbled together a shonky high-wire mime.  Fortunately we'd drunk enough to be truly wobbly on the wire and we didn't need the safety net.

To add insult to injury we then had to brave the elements to watch the fireworks.  This was so badly timed that we missed the big count down to the year 2000 and nothing happened.  Aeroplanes were meant to drop out of the sky, ATMs should have been chucking money onto the streets and Walt Disney was scheduled to raise from the grave.  The Millennium bug didn't strike, a bulb on the Christmas tree went out and that was it.

We have since had the majority of New Year's Eves at home, just Z and I with superb food, wine, company and Jools on the telly Hootannanying through the wee small hours.  This year we're going for beef wellington as the good food.

Not everybody likes their beef cooked the same way**, so individual wellies are the way forward.   Tis the season, and all that, so we are having sprouts.  It's the only time of the year that I get to eat them.  Served with boulangere potatoes, a grand way to see out 2011.

For the record I have enjoyed NYEs in the presence of others since 2000, mostly with my old school friends from Milton Keynes and Z's from Windsor. Whoever you are with, whatever you are doing, happy new year. 

*Stuff is great, I could waffle on about stuff for ages.
**I like mine to remember mooing and pastures green.