Steak and chips

Vegetarians and vegans look away now!

So amongst the stuff I got yesterday was this lovely, big, juicy bit of sirloin steak for around the four to five quid mark from Wisby's in Horncastle. Here it is cut in half by me cos I forgot to take a shot before I cut it:

I decided to have it with chips and veg, and once you know how easy and cheap it is to do your own oven chips, you'll wonder why the hell you've been buying them all this time. Basically you just chop the potatoes up - I leave the skins on but it's up to you - then using a pastry brush, spread a bit of cooking oil on a baking sheet (just enough to cover the surface, you don't need to drown it), spread the chips out on it and just go over the tops of them with the excess oil on your brush and bung them in the oven at 180°C for half an hour. Job done.

Meanwhile, bash the steak with a tenderiser (or a rolling pin, or whatever), turning it over to do both sides, then make little slices into the top and rub butter and pepper into it like this:

Lay it butter side down in a hot frying pan and let it sizzle for about 4 minutes (depending how you like your steak):

As the butter starts to ooze out from under the steak, stick a few bits of mushroom in to cook in the juices, then turn the steak over and put a few thin slices of cheese on top. You can use any cheese you like - a nice strong blue cheese works well, but in this case I used Lymn Bank cracked black pepper:

And by the time the cheese is melted the other side will be done, and you can put it all together on the plate like this:

That's with the broccoli that you obviously magicked up from nowhere like they do on all the cooking shows. And I can tell you now that this went down without touching the sides, as they say.

Meanwhile, in other news, I've discovered the existence of the Lincolnshire Master Gardeners scheme. Which seems to be a most excellent scheme except for one thing: I'd never heard of it. Advertising fail? I think so.

Still, the scheme is there and seems to be doing some good. I might register for some support from it myself as I'm far from experienced in the gardening sphere and have a massive garden that I'd dearly love to turn into a food production zone, but stuff I plant tends to only grow sort of 50% of the time and then never as well as everyone else's! I'll get in touch with them and keep you posted on how it goes.