Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #35: Steak Indian-Style

This was our 35th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We haven’t given up yet! We are still going! We’re just a few weeks behind. This is one we had a couple weeks ago, and frankly it wasn’t that memorable. It was “Steak Indian-Style with Spinach & Paneer Salad, Naan Breads, and Mango Dessert.” We chose it primarily because mangoes came into season! Unfortunately I don’t have the time saved on my phone, but I seem to remember it coming in around the 34 minute mark. The Snook was on chef’s duty for this one.

Substitutions: We couldn’t find Patak’s Jalfrezi paste, so we went with Balti instead. We left the cress out of the salad. We also had an unplanned substitution for the naan breads, but you’ll see about that soon enough. Other than that, everything was as written in the recipe.

Quick verdict: Okay, Indian style steak?? THAT’S NOT A THING. Most Indians don’t even eat beef, much less marinate it in curry paste. It doesn’t taste bad; it’s just a weird idea. That aside, this meal was mostly okay. However, it’s one of the ones where I don’t really know how to eat it. There are just lots of small components, along with dips and such, and it’s just kind of confusing. Like, am I meant to be making a little open-faced sandwich? Or is it more of a salad? We liked all of the individual components well enough. We both rated it an 8 out of 10. I’m not really sure who you’d make this for, though. I sure won’t be serving it to my Indian friends!

Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels. The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready to go. The grill pan was put on high heat and the oven turned on to 180C.

First up are the ingredients for the steak: Patak’s curry paste, lemon, rump steaks, and coriander.

For the curry sauce, we used some more of the paste along with a tin of coconut milk. For the yoghurt dip, we used yoghurt, mint, and lemon.

Here are the naan breads along with the ingredients for the salad: baby spinach, coriander, alfalfa sprouts, carrot, paneer, sesame seeds, and lemon.

For the dessert, we needed mangoes, icing sugar, mint, and lime.

Pots and pans, ready to go! We had a grill pan for the steaks, a saucepan for the curry sauce, and a frying pan for the paneer.

And he’s off! The Snook began by making a marinade for the steaks out of curry paste and lemon juice.

He added olive oil, salt, and pepper and mixed it up.

Then he rubbed the marinade all over the steaks and set them aside for a while.

Now for the yoghurt dip. He spooned yoghurt into a bowl and then added mint, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, and salt.

He started the salad by tipping the spinach into a bowl and tearing over most of the coriander leaves.

He topped it with alfalfa sprouts, and then sliced over thin ribbons of carrot.

For the naan– WAIT! THE NAAN WERE ALL MOULDY. GROSSSSSSS. So, no naan for us. We made do with some slices of sourdough. (We just bought those naan too! I got Coles to give me a refund.)

Time to cook the steaks! They went into the grill pan.

For the curry sauce, the Snook mixed some of the curry paste together in a saucepan with coconut milk and left it to heat up.

Next he sliced up the paneer…

…quickly jumped to turn over the steaks…

…and then placed the paneer into the frying pan with olive oil to fry. Multi-tasking!

Curry sauce is just about done.

Once the paneer was golden on the bottom, he flipped it over to cook the other side.

The steak was finished so he put it into a board to rest.

To finish the paneer, he sprinkled on salt and sesame seeds.

Lastly, the dessert. He started by cutting off the mango cheeks…

…and making the customary “hedgehog.”

Then he sprinkled the cheeks with icing sugar.

A bit of mint and a squeeze of lime finished them off!

He finished the salad by placing the cooked pieces of paneer around the edge of the bowl and tipping the excess sesame seeds over the top.

Here’s the finished salad!

Lastly, he sliced up the pieces of steak…

…before dressing them with coriander and the juices from the board.

The final condiments: curry sauce and yoghurt dip.

And here’s the completed meal: Steak Indian-Style, Spinach & Paneer Salad, “Naan” Breads, and Mango Dessert.

Tasting notes: Meh. Everything was fine. It probably would’ve been nicer with naan rather than sourdough, but that was out of our control. The salad was nice and crunchy, and everybody likes fried paneer. The steak was good, though I don’t think such a quick marinade imparts much to the final product. The two dipping sauces were mostly wasted, since we didn’t really know what to do with them. And the dessert was really just a mango! So a simple one, and also a weird one. This one feels a little like filler. We both rated it an 8 out of 10, but I can’t really see us bothering to make it again.