This was our 30th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. For this week, we chose “Steak Sarnie, Crispy New Potatoes, Cheesy Mushrooms, and Beetroot Salad.” We made this meal on Saturday, the day before the Sydney Running Festival Half-Marathon. We chose it because we had the episode recorded, and it seemed like a good choice for a pre-race meal: a good amount of carbs, but not overly heavy like pasta. We also prepared this for lunch instead of dinner so we could just eat a light meal of leftovers in the evening. I was on chef’s duty for this one and I was flyin’! I finished it in 29:44.

Substitutions: We already had normal potatoes on hand so I used those instead of buying “New” potatoes. You can’t get pre-cooked beetroot here, so I simply boiled mine up ahead of time. We’re not 100% certain if our mushrooms were Portobellos; basically we just got the biggest ones we could find. I was going to use the jarred red peppers as indicated, but when I opened mine they were moldy so I left them out. Other than that, everything was as written in the recipe.

Quick verdict: I had guessed this one would be a crowd-pleaser, but it ended up being somewhat divisive! It was mostly the mushrooms. Neither of us are big mushroom eaters, but I’ve been making an effort to learn to like them. I actually really liked these. I thought the strong flavours and the rich cheese really complimented the thick slab
of mushroom. The Snook didn’t like the texture of the mushroom itself though. The sandwich and the potatoes were good, and the beetroot salad was tasty and different. Overall I rated the meal an 8.5 out of 10, while the Snook rated it an 8. It’s a simple, quick, and (mostly) unobjectionable meal that lots of folks should like.

(more…)