Beef Steak in Port & Camembert Cheese.

the other day at Safeway (Melbourne's answer to Woolworth's), ryce and i picked up--amongst other things--a bottle of Tawny Port, a pack of "special sale" camembert and some "special sale" beef steak. now using whatever's available to us, we thought it would be good to revisit one of my older steak recipes.

along with the steak, we're going to have a simple side of grilled vegetables and a few pieces of Woolworth's cheesy sausages. i'd also explain the vegetables, but not the sausages...

Ingredients.
(for the steak)
2 beef steaks (again i'm using scotch fillet)
1 cup, Port wine
3 tbsp, camembert (i usually use blue cheese)
1 tbsp, black pepper
4 bunch, coriander (i normally use parsley for this dish)
1 tbsp, olive oil (for the pan-fry)

(for the vegetable side)
2 tomatoes
1 carrot
4 asparagus
1 lime
1 tbsp, salt
2 tbsp, sesame oil

(optional)
6 sausages (abt 2" each)

Serves.
2

Step 1: Marinating the beef.
easy: place steaks in bowl, add port, black pepper and minced coriander. stir it about a bit to ensure you've got everything mixed well, and leave it to soak for at least half an hour.



cut the cheese up and mash it up a little so that it's nicely pasty.

Step 2: Prepare vegetables.

chop the carrot and asparagus up. (by the way, i hope everyone is familiar with the whole rid-the-bitter-end-of-your-asparagus routine.) add them to a bowl, and pour some boiling water into the bowl. add a tbsp of salt and leave everything to soak for about 5-10 minutes. drain water after.

while soaking, dice your tomatoes, and slice the lime into reasonable pieces for easy juicing later.



mix all your vegetables together in preparation for the grill. preheat your oven for about 10 minutes, then set it to about 200 degrees, before setting the vegetables in for about 20 minutes.

when it's done, add the sesame oil to the mixture, and we're more or less done.

Side: Something about sausages.
on today's Huey's Cooking Adventures, Huey brings up a tip on cooking sausages. apparently, before you set it in your pan to fry, you should braise the sausages with warm (not boiling) water for about 5 minutes. if the sausage skin breaks open, you know the water's too hot.



NOTE: i can't quite remember the exact type of sausages, or the rationale behind this move, but we got the gist and in Huey i trust.

Step 3: Cooking the steaks!
over a big flame, pour your oil into the pan and let the pan heat up. when it's hot, place your steaks into the pan and let it cook for about 2-3 minutes on both sides (if you're into medium-rare like me).

if you're particular about sealing the meat, you'd have to continuously flip your steaks every 20 seconds until both sides brown.

once cooked, move the steaks off the flame and place them on your serving plates. lower your flame to medium, and pour the rest of the marinade in. let it simmer until it's reduced to about half.

while waiting for the marinade, apply a generous amount of cheese on the top side of the steaks. try to even it out as much as you can.

when the marinade has been reduced, pour that onto the steaks.

Final Serve.
i've served the lime slices together with the vegetables to allow the guest (ryce) free reign in how sour she wants her vegetables to be. the sesame oil will provide some fragrance and taste, but what really gives the punch will be the lime juice.

as much as possible, the steaks should be served right after the marinade is poured. wait too long and you might only have a thin film of cheese left on your steaks since everything else melted away. don't worry that your steaks will be too sweet from all that port, with the cheese, parsley/ coriander and pepper, it will be a really interesting mouthful of beef.



enjoy!