WHAT’S COOKING: A steak salad with baby potatoes, broccoli, green beans, tomatoes and two dressings

Leftover fillet steak cooked perfectly medium rare and refrigerated overnight can be brought out the following day as one element of a summery salad.

This steak – beef fillet – was cooked on the coals the night before, and was as tender as you could hope for any steak to be. But I’d cooked too much and there was about 400g of beef fillet left over. I popped it into the fridge overnight.

The next evening, I built a crisp salad around it, while bearing in mind the things that go well with steak. Potatoes – but they would be babies, boiled until just al dente. (Yes, that suits potatoes too, not only pasta.) Tomatoes, simply dressed with olive oil and salt. Broccolini (baby/tenderstem broccoli) and fine green beans, both blanched and given a tangy dressing.

For the rest, these disparate elements deserved more than one dressing. For the potatoes, I mixed a little mayonnaise with olive oil, caper brine, a few chopped capers, a splash of botanical vinegar, salt and black pepper.

For the rest, I stirred chopped soft blue cheese into full cream Greek yoghurt, adding finely chopped garlic, salt and black pepper.

And the salad in general was blessed with a drizzling of fine quality extra virgin olive oil, and seasoned with salt and black pepper.

Tony’s steak salad with baby potatoes, broccolini, green beans, tomatoes and two dressings

(Serves 2-4)

Ingredients

400g rare fillet steak, in strips

10 broccolini florets, trimmed

1 cup fine green beans

4 medium tomatoes, quartered

10 baby potatoes, unpeeled

For the first dressing:

2 Tbsp soft blue cheese, chopped

½ cup full cream Greek yoghurt

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

Salt and black pepper to taste

For the second dressing:

2 Tbsp mayonnaise

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 Tbsp caper brine (brine from a jar of capers)

1 Tbsp capers, chopped

2 Tbsp botanical vinegar (I used Rozendal fynbos vinegar)

Salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Rinse and dry the baby potatoes and put them in a pot of cold water seasoned with salt. Bring them to a boil and cook rapidly until the potatoes are just tender. Drain in a colander and leave to cool to room temperature.

You need 2 colanders for blanching the green vegetables, or a colander and a sieve. 

Top and tail the green beans and trim the hard ends of the broccoli stems.

Add more cold water to the same pot and bring it to a boil. Add the green beans and blanch in lightly boiling water for less than 2 minutes. Tip them into a colander and run cold water through. Leave them to drain in the colander.

Add more water to the pot and bring it back to a boil. Add the broccolini and blanch in the same way as for the green beans. Tip into a colander, drain, and refresh under cold running water. Leave to drain.

The beans and broccoli should both be a brilliant green now.

Choose an attractive platter.

Slice the steak into thin strips and lay them out on a part of the platter. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and black pepper.

In a bowl big enough to hold all the potatoes, mix the mayonnaise, olive oil, caper brine, chopped capers, botanical vinegar, salt and black pepper.

Slice the cooled baby potatoes in half, add them to the bowl, and toss several times so that every half potato is coated in the dressing. Arrange the dressed potatoes on one part of the platter.

Arrange the broccolini and green beans on the platter attractively. Slice the tomatoes and fill a gap on the platter with them.

Mix the blue cheese, Greek yoghurt and salt and black pepper in a second bowl. Spoon blobs of this dressing here and there.

The point is to fill the platter up, so bear this in mind when arranging everything.

Drizzle olive oil over the green vegetables and tomatoes, and season it all with salt and black pepper, including the little mounds of mayo dressing.

You’re good to go, and I don’t see the need for any garnish on this salad, as there’s plenty that looks pretty already. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks