Saturday, June 26, 2010

MasterChef, Jamie Oliver and Dressing the board


As many of you are probably aware, I live in Australia and am a big big fan of Australian reality show, MasterChef. Amateur cooks compete in these amazing challenges recreating siganture dishes from some of the world's biggest culinary icons - Matt Moran, Kylie Kwong, Neil Perry - and at the end one is left standing to be named the MasterChef and gets a publishing deal, money and prestige. Anyway if you haven't seen it - you should - the eps are here - http://www.masterchef.com.au

Anyhow, this week, the show's being filmed in London, home to some of the biggest cooking names around - including of course, Jamie Oliver. I've seen his shows, read about his philanthropic work - he was showcased in a cover story I had worked on at my old job. To see this guy doing his thing on ANOTHER show though I one he's not the producer of - was actually quite phenomenal. You can see Jamie is the real deal, passionate - bursting with energy - completely eccentric and running at 50 million miles a minute!

One of the interesting concepts he presented was a new way to cook steak - he called it "dressing the board" - quite a simple concept but really brought out some fresh new flavours. Here's what we tried:

Ingredients:

1 thick juicy 200 g sirloin steak
3 tbs mint, finely chopped
2 small chilis finely chopped
1 tsp mince garlic
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs balsamic vinegar

Large wood chopping board

Method:

Cook the steak in a pan as desired. While the steak is cooking prepare your dressing ingredients and mix the mint and chili well on the board. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic and stir through. When the steak is cooked take it straight out the pan, place it on the board with your dressing and coat liberally. As the steak starts to cool and seal off, it'll take on the flavours of the board - so you have a well flavoured piece of gorgeous and juicy steak - without the typical burning of the marinade! Genius!

Disclaimer: blatant self promotion and update. Sorry folks, but I'm using my own blog to my own gain. :) Outsie of cooking - I write kids books, including girls books age 8 and up and my first book is out! I would love if you would take a moment to check it out! Okay - that's it, I promise! Thanks for reading.

5 comments:

  1. MMM. i love steak. See haha.. Hey btw, i am using posterous, i reckon its better thank the blogspot wai. You dont get those annoying bars at the top and you can just email your blog, id have to show you one day :) Keep it up

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  2. haha yeah I know about posterous - everyone on it a coder. :) I should probably use wordpress actually - as for the the bar on top - haha it actually helps deliver a bit of referral traffic (and I need all the traffic numbers I can get!) ;)

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  3. dressing the board... interesting idea! =) but i was wondering, does it work differently if i use a plastic chopping board?

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  4. Hmm...that's a good question about the plastic board. I've looked into this issue myself, and really think the dfiference is a matter of personal preference. There are some concerns (BPA etc) with putting a hot steak on a plastic board and whether the plastic would leach chemicals. (Again that's another discussion altogether :D).

    Plastic boards will probably stain though with the balsamic.

    Thanks for the comments!

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  5. Had this dish at my brother & sister in laws place...IT WAS AMAZING! Melt in your mouth food

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