Roast Lamb Steaks with Broccoli, Chimichurri and Gratin Dauphinois
This month's entry is, I concede, a questionable cross-continental mish-mash but I had been living out of a suitcase for ten days on a buying trip and it was what I fancied cooking and eating. I didn't refer to any texts so my quantities and timings are approximate.
Chimichurri is the Argentinian take on Salsa Verde - an amalgamation of green herbs, olive oil, chilli, garlic and white wine vinegar that is widely used as a condiment for grilled meat dishes throughout Latin America. I put a generous handful (circa 25 grams) of flat leaf parsley in a blender with 2 teaspoons of dry oregano, 2 peeled cloves of garlic, one red and one green chilli, a shallot, a generous slug of both olive oil and red wine vinegar and then blizzed everything until it formed an unctuous liquid. I then set that aside to use as dressing.
For the dauphinois I finely sliced 8 medium sized Maris Piper potatoes and layered them in a buttered baking dish interspersed with seasoning, chopped garlic, some drizzled olive oil and about half a cup of milk. I topped that with grated cheddar which is not an authentic ingredient but does make for a nice crusty topping - so that is your call.
The organic lamb steaks I bought weighed in at 300 grams and I rubbed them with olive oil, salt and pepper before roasting them in a pre-heated oven for 50 minutes at 180 degrees C., along with the gratin. If you like your lamb pink then I would shorten the cooking time but my goal was crispy fat over rare meat so they were pretty well done.
Whilst the lamb and potatoes were cooking I trimmed and lightly steamed the broccoli, warmed some plates up before serving everything together leaving people to help themselves to the chimichurri.
As this is a dish of big bold flavours I paired it with the briary, berry-scented Fitou 2016 from Domaine de Rebouls, which is, par hasard one of 'Wines of the Month'.
